


you could tell me it's fine, i could sew you a stitch and save nine

by wolfhalls



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (but neither Cassian or Bodhi), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Coming Untouched, First Time, Fix-It, M/M, Oral Sex, Reunions, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-07 21:18:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11067321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfhalls/pseuds/wolfhalls
Summary: “Do you think that we're different people now?” Cassian asks, and his voice is suddenly so, so serious. Weighed down by all the distance travelled, all the time that's passed.“Yeah,” Bodhi says. “I think we are. I don't think that you can really live through what we have and not be, you know?” He's not sure if that's what Cassian wants to hear, but he's lied too much and not said enough for too long. He gestures with his hand again. “Come on,” he says.Now get up, he urges inside his own head, as if that's the hardest part.Cassian looks at him, and for once that calm, pinpoint stare is focused on him alone. It should be disconcerting. It's not.He takes Bodhi's hand.(or: life after the war isn't easy, but somehow Bodhi and Cassian find each other again.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quentinknockout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentinknockout/gifts).



> this, in all its overwrought, introspective glory, is for jo. love you to a galaxy far, far away and back.
> 
> title comes from [ayla by the maccabees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkcnPnY_2Mk).
> 
> a caveat: none of the rogue one gang, save cassian and bodhi, survive. cassian even ends up playing a part in k-2's demise. it takes a looooong time for things to get cheerful, but it's worth it when they do, i promise :).

A good pilot dies with his ship, say his superiors. He chants it to himself on missions when things are looking shaky. _A good pilot dies with his ship, a good pilot dies with his ship._ When Bodhi Rook is twenty-five years old, a grenade comes clattering into a ship that technically isn't his, but is as good as right now. The mantra starts again in his head, so familiar it may as well be clockwork. _A good pilot dies with his ship, a good pi-_

Fuck that.

With a fury and a sudden will to live that surprises him, he snarls, grabs the grenade and launches it straight back out the way it came. For a moment he thinks that it's a dud, that he wasn't really that close to fulfilling his purpose as Imperial cannon fodder. Then it explodes, sending Bodhi flying backwards. He hits the floor with a thud, and his whole body seizes up in pain, but he's alive. He laughs then, screams with the joy of it. _I'm not done yet_ , he says out loud, and a solider cheers. “No you're bloody not!” Bodhi's ears are ringing, but he hears that man as clearly as the sky is blue.

Baze and Chirrut, they die within running distance of his ship. One could not have gone on without the other, and that makes it easier to bear. Jyn survives Scarif – Bodhi rescues both her and Cassian from that beach where they're kneeling, ready for their fate. Jyn jokes that she has a debt to pay, that she's cheated death too many times now. She honours that debt a year later, shot down at Cassian's feet during a raid on the ship. Dead before she hits the floor. Bodhi and Cassian stare at her body dumbly, as if it's a trick of the light. The piece of kyber she wears around her neck glimmers, almost pulses. _It was quick,_ Bodhi tells Cassian when he heaves and gasps against Bodhi's shoulder – not really crying, his body just convulsing in grief. _She wouldn't even have had time to be afraid._

The team who tend to her body back at the base give Cassian her necklace. He takes it, his mouth set in a tight, grim line. He doesn't say anything, just tucks it into his pocket and carries on cleaning his gun. Later though, Bodhi sees him place it around his own neck. K-2 places a hand on his shoulder, and Cassian closes his eyes, his body bracing itself against the emotion that comes. Bodhi doesn't go over to them. He's not really sure where to start.

Bodhi doesn't sleep the night before they head out on their suicide mission in in the skies above Endor. He wanders the ship that they're stationed on, and finds Cassian in the mess hall, leaning against the wall. Bodhi sits next to him, and Cassian passes him the bottle that he's clearly been swigging from. Bodhi looks at the label. Some Corellian firewater. He takes a sip. _Fuck._ Tastes like engine cleaner. Beside Cassian, K-2 whirs in a way that sounds exactly like an exasperated sigh.

“Cassian,” he starts. “There is a 59. 5 chance that if you are to carry on drinking at your current speed, then y-”

“We're probably going to be dead by this time tomorrow,” Cassian says. “I don't know about you, but I fancy spending my last few hours getting drunk with my friends.”

K-2 cocks his head to the side. “I cannot ingest alcohol,” he says, deadpan.

Cassian lets his head fall back against the wall and laughs. He's been cleared to fly tomorrow – Luke had told Bodhi two days ago. He's a better at spying than he is at the controls of an X-wing, but he's a good enough pilot, a good enough shot. They need him, because there's not much chance of them coming back with even a quarter of their pilots. _Cannon fodder,_ Bodhi thinks to himself. He takes another swig of the drink, a big one this time.

Later, Cassian walks Bodhi back to his room. They're not drunk, not really. Turns out that years of knocking back neat alcohol to ease your nerves makes you a lot more tolerant to it. When they reach Bodhi's quarters, Cassian clears his throat.

“Bodhi,” he says. “Just,” and he brings a hand to Bodhi's shoulder. “Just come back alive. Please, just-”

“Says the man with a deathwish,” says Bodhi, rolling his eyes. Cassian looks stricken though, so Bodhi lets his face soften, and brings his own hand up to squeeze at the hand Cassian has on his shoulder. “I won't promise you anything,” he whispers, “because I don't need to.”

“ _Please,_ ” Cassian says. “Even if we don't win, even if it means ducking out of there before-”

“No,” Bodhi says, and the bluntness of his own voice surprises him. “I'll see it through,” he says, gentler this time. “I'll see it through, and so will you.”

Cassian looks like he wants to say something else, but then K-2 is calling down the hallway, threatening to drag Cassian to bed if he doesn't come with him right that second. Cassian smiles. “We've still got that bottle to finish, right?”

Bodhi smiles. “That we have.”

After that, there's barely enough time to breathe. Bodhi is under Shara Bey's command, and she pulls him into a hug before he climbs into his cockpit. “I've told Poe all about you,” she says, her voice just about holding. “You come back, so I can bring you home to meet him.”

Bodhi smiles, even though he's shaking so much he can barely stand. “So he's going to be a little pilot then?” he says.

“He'll be one hell of a pilot,” Shara says – and Force, she's so frightened. Bodhi reaches for her hand, and squeezes it tight.

“I better not keep him waiting too long then,” he says. Shara smiles, and then Kes is running across the departure bay, calling her name. Bodhi climbs the ladder of his ship then, leaving them to each other. _If anyone makes it out_ , Bodhi thinks, _please let it be them_.

It's easy to focus when he's alone in his ship, his hands sure on the controls. Just before the command comes to depart for Endor, he thinks of Cassian. _They have a bottle to finish_ , and he thinks of that as the ship shudders, groans and then surges forwards.

It's hard to tell how much time passes when you're up there among the stars, your friend's voices in your ears, your own heartbeat just as loud. Victory seems impossible but then suddenly, it comes. The Death Star explodes, a terror turned to dust. Bodhi yells and cries in his cockpit before punching the controls that send him hurtling into hyperspeed. When the Empire had begun to build this new beast, supposedly even more lethal than the first, he'd almost given up. What was the point? Jyn, Baze and Chirrut gone, and for what? Just for their enemies to keep rising again, to grow two heads where one was struck off? Bodhi remembers looking at Cassian slumped in his chair in the command centre and thinking that he could _see_ the grief that was pressing down on him, a black mass that threatened to crush the life out of him. For what, for what? Well, when victory comes, definite this time – Bodhi knows that it's for this. It was all for this.

He finds Cassian afterwards, back at the base, and he's smiling so much he looks like a different person. “We did it” he says, cradling Bodhi's face in his hands. Later, K-2 hoists him up in the air and Cassian laughs and laughs and laughs some more, his head cast up at the sky, his arms outstretched. Bodhi thinks that if anything were to happen, he'll always remember Cassian like that, screaming his joy up at the stars.

The war is won. It's finished. Life is good.

Except no one really tells you what to do once it's all over, do they? Sure, there are the celebrations, the moments of contemplation for those who didn't manage to see it through till the end. It's impossible not to get swept up in the emotion of it all. Once that's worn off though, and the reality of needing to keep living, to find normality, hits home – that's when you realise that you're hopelessly cast adrift.

Bodhi sees it in Cassian before too long. It's having to say goodbye to K-2 that does it.

Oh, K-2.

An order comes through for all the droids to be wiped, save for a few that will be put away into storage. As K-2 was present while Cassian was carrying out questionable deeds on behalf of the Rebellion, he is not for keeping. New Republic officials call him a security risk. Bodhi thinks that they're just trying pretend that some parts of the war never happened.

Cassian asks if he can be the one to erase K-2's memories. “It's the least I can do, to not have him sent away to someone he doesn't know.” Cassian doesn't ask Bodhi to be there while he does it, but Bodhi sits there while Cassian works anyway. When K-2 whirs back into life afterwards, Cassian reaches for his hands and squeezes the metal between his fingers. For a moment Bodhi thinks that it hasn't worked, and that they'll be stuck with K-2 as he is forever, the rules be dammed.

Then, K-2 tilts his head forwards, a sign of servitude. He wouldn't have done that to Cassian in a hundred thousand years, and Bodhi's heart sinks. “I am K-2SO,” the droid (not K-2, not after this) starts to say, and Cassian flinches. He jerks his hand away, and Bodhi reaches for him.

“Don't,” Cassian says. “Don't, just-” and he brings a hand to his mouth and walks out of the room. His shoulders are shaking, and Bodhi thinks of how Cassian's body had been racked with the force of his grief for Jyn.

Bodhi is left with a droid that is running through its start-up, an endless list of abilities and advice for its owner. Bodhi doesn't like to call a droid 'it', but there's nothing there of the one that he spent years getting to know, and in the end, like. He presses the power button on its neck, and it falls silent. He leaves the room, but doesn't turn the light off. _Welcome to the world,_ he thinks. _Hope you'll be able to make more sense of it than me._

Cassian turns up at Bodhi's room that night, wild-eyed and, Bodhi suspects, frightened of being alone. “He was my friend” Cassian says. “I don't have anything here, I don't have anything left to fight for, I don't have _anyone._ ”

“You have me,” Bodhi says quietly.

Cassian looks at him, and clutches his hand even more tightly around that memory stick. “You'll be gone soon,” he says, and it's hollow.

“I won't leave you,” Bodhi says.

“You won't want to leave me Bodhi,” Cassian says, and it's so soft in his mouth, Bodhi's name. “But you have to grow.”

Later, Bodhi will understand. Right now, he pulls Cassian to his chest, and they sit together in the dark.

-

The next few months go a little something like this: Cassian is sent on missions that stretch out for weeks at a time, and in his and K-2's absence, Bodhi grows restless. _You have to grow,_ Cassian had said. Bodhi feels like he's trying to put roots down in sand, constantly sifting and sinking under his feet. It's impossible. People are going back to their homes, their families, and Bodhi, who lacks both, has no idea what to do next.

Cassian doesn't tell him not to go, but each time he leaves for another mission, he hugs Bodhi so, so tightly, his hands fisted in the back of Bodhi's shirt. He doesn't like the things he's being sent away to do, but he's been doing this for so long he doesn't really know what else to do. Two days ago he told Bodhi that he'd be gone for eight weeks, and both of them knew then. Bodhi has had a bag packed for just over a month now.

“See you soon,” he says as he holds Bodhi close. “Promise me-”

“I won't promise you anything,” Bodhi says, the beginning of a line that's grown well-worn and familiar, “because I don't need to.”

“We've got a bottle to finish,” Cassian says, and oh, Bodhi's going to miss him like hell.

“Something like that,” he murmurs against Cassian's hair. _Be safe,_ he thinks, tries to signal in the way he grips Cassian's shoulder just before they part. _We're not done just yet._

He doesn't watch Cassian board the ship. Instead, he goes back to his room and packs the last remaining possessions that he hasn't already. A worry-stone Wedge had given him just before they'd faced the Imperial forces on Hoth, a charm bracelet he'd picked up off the ground in the midst of a sandstorm when he was six, a pressed leaf from Endor.

When he closes the door to his room behind him, he breathes out slowly. Once, twice. He looks down the hallway, where just before the walls curve into a bed, he can see Cassian's door. He clutches the handle of his bag a little tighter, and forces himself to set his gaze in the other direction. One foot forward, and then another. Good. Easy, really.

He doesn't come across anyone until he reaches the departure bay, and then he walks straight into Leia Organa. She's rocking her son back and forth in her arms, and the little baby, Ben, is fussing and whimpering. Bodhi colliding with them doesn't really help, and he lets out a wail that makes both Bodhi and Leia wince.

“He's so hard to settle,” Leia says. She looks at Bodhi, and he can see that her eyes are heavy, framed by dark circles. “Couldn't sleep either, huh?” Then she catches sight of the bag that Bodhi is trying his best to hide behind him, and frowns. “Bodhi?” she asks, her voice serious all of a sudden. He suspects that it's the tone she reserves for particularly testy sessions in the Senate.

Bodhi gulps.

Leia sighs. “You're leaving, aren't you?”

Bodhi couldn't lie to her, even if he wanted to. So he nods, his shoulders sagging.

Leia smiles, and instead of chastising Bodhi for his ungratefulness, cocks her head to the side, gesturing towards the canteen. “Come on,” she says. “Let's get you some caf and something to eat before you go. I won't have you smuggling yourself away on a ship to the other side of the galaxy on an empty stomach.” She turns around, Ben already growing restless at her standing still, and looks at Bodhi over her shoulder. “Captain Rook,” she says. “That's an order.”

Bodhi is so stunned that for a moment, his feet remain very firmly rooted to the floor. Then he comes to his senses, and follows Leia to the canteen.

It's almost empty when they get there, and a few salutes for Leia and coos for Ben aside, no one pays them too much attention. Kes Dameron is there, and he waves at them both from his table, but doesn't come over. Bodhi knows that he's heading back home next week with Shara, to raise their son on Yavin IV. Bodhi waves back at him, and then follows Leia to a table in the corner. They drink their caf in silence, Ben now sleeping soundly against Leia's chest, his little hands balled in the fabric of her shirt. “So,” Leia begins.

“It's not that I don't like it here,” Bodhi starts, the words tumbling out of him in a rush. “I love it, I love everyone, they're my friends, and you've been s-”

Leia holds a hand up, stopping Bodhi. “I'm not asking for an excuse,” she says softly. “I just want to know what you're planning to do now.”

“I don't really know,” Bodhi says. “But I'll figure it out.”

Leia smiles. “I think we're all doing that, one way or another.” She holds Ben a little tighter. Bodhi hasn't seen Solo on the base since last week. Everyone knows that he and Leia have been arguing –Force, when they really get going you can hear them shouting from the control room all the way back out in the cargo bay. “But you think that you'll be happy though?”

“I hope so.” Bodhi drains his mug of caf and makes a start on at the food on his plate – mashed gava root and dumplings.

“Have you told Captain Andor that you're leaving?” Leia asks.

“As good as,” he says. There's something about Leia that makes you want to be honest, compels you to do so. “I don't really think either of us wanted the other to say it out loud.”

Leia sighs. “Men. I'll never understand you for as long as I live.”

Bodhi laughs hollowly at that. “Tell him I'll miss him,” he says. “When he comes back.”

“No way,” comes Leia's reply. “You'll say whatever you're going to say to him when you see each other again.” She reaches out, pulling Ben close with one arm. “There's a transport ship leaving at five. It's going to the Core Worlds. You're not leaving smuggled in a cargo hold, Bodhi Rook. You're going to leave with honour.” She squeezes Bodhi's forearm, her eyes bright. “I figure that that gives you half an hour, and you're already packed, so go. You've got my blessing.,” she says. “Not that you ever needed to ask for it. May the Force be with you.”

“I don't know how to thank you,” Bodhi says, and to his surprise he can feel his voice cracking.

Leia smiles. “Go live a good life,” she says. “That's all I want.”

So he rises out of his seat, and salutes. Leia returns the gesture. Slowly, determinedly, he turns around, and begins the long walk.

-

He falls in with a Jedhan crew for a while, fixing up old ships and helping to rebuild towns that were ruined during the war. They talk about the festivals they celebrated when they were children, share dishes that their mothers taught them how to cook, and cling to the last shreds of familiarity, of home.

They travel all over the galaxy, visiting places damaged by Imperial and Rebellion forces alike. On Naboo, whole towns have been reduced to rubble by the Rebellion, who saw it as their duty to bomb the place of Palpatine's birth, a symbolic show of defiance against the Empire. On Jakku, already a wasteland, settlements lay crushed underneath fallen Imperial ships. They do what they can, ferrying building supplies from planet to planet, bringing medicine to the sick. On Naboo they work alongside a crew from Alderaan, and _oh,_ isn't that a time. Bodhi doesn't cry about Jedha until he's drunk and kissing a handsome Alderaanian medic, and it hits him just how alone they both are in the universe. He doesn't stop though, and lets the man wipe his tears and back him up against the wall.

“I'll make you feel better, I'll take care of you,” he whispers against Bodhi's neck. “Just let go.”

Bodhi doesn't even known his name, but he lets him.

It's easy to settle into a routine of rebuilding. It feels like penance in a way. Bodhi fought on both sides of the war, so he feels like he's got more to apologise for. He tells Chirra this one day, when they're unloading the ship at dawn. She looks at him sadly.

“You don't need to prove yourself any more, Bodhi. Plenty of us had dealings with the Empire, and most of that wasn't through choice.”

Bodhi nods, and wishes he hadn't opened his mouth. _You don't understand,_ he wants to say. _You haven't seen what I have._

So after a year, this is why Bodhi has to leave them behind. He'd thought that it might help him to feel a little more like himself again, to reconnect with the place he came from, but he was wrong. Surrounded by a reminder of something that no longer exists hurts him, deep down in his chest where there is no soothing it. No one on the ship can make him feel better when he has days where he can't even pull himself out of his bunk, and when he tries to talk about his time with the Rebellion he's either met with looks of pity (awful) or hero worship (even worse).

They drop him off on Coruscant, and the goodbyes are fond but final. Bodhi promises that he'll stay in touch, and so do his shipmates. They all know that that's a lie. None of them have put down any roots since Jedha fell, on new planets or with people. It's easier to avoid any more anguish that way.

Relief work is behind him, so what now? Cargo work will suit him well enough. Short haul jobs leaving from the centre of the city. Shipments of spices, precious metals and gems, alcohol, textiles, food cryo-preserved so it reaches plates on the other side of the galaxy as fresh as when it was first made. No weapons. Bodhi specifies that. The shipping company boss doesn't mind. The galaxy is making itself new once more, and people have come out of the war different to how they went into it. She just tells him to get his hands on a Coruscanti shipping licence and then holds out her hand for him to shake it. Still, he has ilicit, extraordinarily well paid offers to ship explosives to mining colonies, ancient weapons to huge museum ships. He always turns them down. He hasn't touched a weapon since he was with the Rebellion, and he'd set down his standard issue blaster on his bed when he left. The thought of it sets his teeth on edge.

He sets up a home of sorts in his rented ship for a while, snatching a few hours sleep whenever he's docked for long enough. Eventually though, his back begins to complain with sharp, aching vigour after nights spent in his cramped little bunk, and he concedes that it may be time to find a better arrangement.

So he rents a little apartment in a part of Coruscant that could politely be described as up-and-coming, and tries to start again. He befriends Oroa and Xira who live next door, two women with a hoard of daughters who take an immediate interest in their new neighbour. To live next door to someone who fought against the Empire is nothing short of life-changing for those four little girls. Bodhi doesn't tell them that he defected from that very same Empire. Even now, he doesn't like to mention it. It curdles what is otherwise a wonderful tale. Cassian told him once that there's nothing wrong with redemption, and that Bodhi made the right choice in the end. That's all that matters, he'd said. Fiercely, firmly. Bodhi still feels shame rear up him in him though, a dark roil of self loathing at the thought of the Imperial crest he'd once sported. So he doesn't tell the girls – Lera, Rixa, Gara and Treha – that he once worked for the people he eventually helped to bring down. Imperial defectors are ten for a credit, especially in a place like Coruscant. Still. It doesn't make Bodhi's unease any less palatable.

Bodhi has always lied, for good or ill. It's a habit he's finding it hard to break, even now.

-

He's let his hair grow long, past his shoulders, past his waist. He remembers deciding to stop cutting it around the same time he decided that he was going to defect. A breach of the Empire's regulations. Turns out, no one really cared how a cargo pilot kept his hair. No one really cared what a cargo pilot did at all, as long as he arrived and departed on schedule. A good cargo pilot was an invisible one. Bodhi still let his hair grow. It felt like a small part of him was thriving, even when he felt like a wick that was just about to burn out and turn to smoke. Through his time with the Rebellion he let it grow and grow, right up until now.

He looks at himself in the mirror, and bunches his hair up on top of his head. With his other hand, he raises a pair of shears, of all things, that he'd found on a ship two months back. The first _snip_ makes him reel a little, almost as if he's been struck. He brings his clenched hand away from his head, bringing a great clump of hair with it. He looks at it a little dumbly, and then throws it in the bin. The clock on the wall chimes mechanically, and Bodhi looks back at his reflection. He looks a little...lopsided. He takes a deep breath, and hacks at another long section, just letting it fall onto the floor this time.

After that, it's easy to carry on. He cuts it until it's barely an inch long, sticking up from his head as if it's surprised. _You and me both,_ Bodhi thinks, which is patently ridiculous. He gets the trimmer out, the little thing that he uses on his beard, and gets to work on what's left of it. When it's gone, shaved down to the scalp, Bodhi winces at his reflection. _How far I've come,_ he thinks. _How I wish I hadn't had to live through a moment of it._

He throws his hair out with the vegetable peelings and empty caf-fizz cans. Just another day's rubbish. He doesn't stop running his hand over his head for days, back and forth over the strange, stubbly resistance of it. It feels new. Foreign. Not quite wrong, but foreign nonetheless.

In his new bed that still feels too soft after years of thin mattresses and creaky bunks on the Rebel bases, he dreams of Galen. He'd thought that he loved him a long time ago, and when he died it had felt like he was being cleaved down the middle, an agony that was somehow sharper and deeper than seeing the city he grew up in destroyed before his eyes. He'd cried until he felt wrung out, until he was sick, and Cassian had stroked the back of his neck so tenderly, had held Bodhi against his chest as he sobbed. As he lays there in the darkness, he swears that he can feel Cassian's fingers on the nape of his neck, sure and gentle.

When he does fall asleep, he dreams of Galen and his message to Jyn. Bodhi had watched it after Galen had given it to him, even though he promised that he wouldn't. Jyn asked him if he had, on the way to Eadu, and Bodhi had half-lied, because his mind felt like it was being pulled and pushed, too fast, too slow, _fuck._ It hurt to try and remember, so he had said no.

He remembers now though. He'd stared at Galen's hazy blue image, listened to the way his voice broke as he spoke to his daughter. Bodhi had wished more than anything that Galen could have spared some of that love for him, and had watched that message over and over again in the dark. In his dreams, Galen's eyes meet his, finally warm and kind where they had once been desperate and distracted. Bodhi reaches for him, and his hand cuts through the hologram, breaking Galen's image into little blue pieces that shatter like glass. His hand hurts. He looks down at it, and it's covered in blood.

It wasn't Galen he was in love with, Bodhi thinks as he tries to calm himself after waking, his heart racing, his hand throbbing. Still, there's nothing he can do about it now. It's been so long since he's seen Cassian. He brings his hands up to his face and rubs the balls of them against his eyes, groaning. 

-

Months pass, then a year. Bodhi's curiosity gets the better of him. K-2SO, Jyn, Baze, Chirrut – they're as clear as anything in his mind. He knows what happened to them. With Cassian, it's more difficult. Cassian always did have a knack for disappearing, and now Bodhi doesn't have the Rebellion's resources to help him either. He briefly considers getting in touch with Leia, or Wedge, or even Luke. He doesn't though. He'd made the choice to leave, hadn't he? Now he was going to have to find Cassian by himself.

Bodhi starts looking on his holopad. He tries all the social sites first, which is stupid. Cassian is a former spy. Or was a former spy. Was as in dead, was as in has found new employment. Or maybe he's _still_ a spy. The uncertainty makes Bodhi itch, and he worries at the skin on his forearm with his fingernails while he wonders what to do next.

He tries a dating site one night, while he's drunk. That's even more ridiculous. Spies wouldn't be inclined to use their real name on a platform to reconnect with friends, much less on one to get laid. He uses a picture of Cassian that he has saved to his holopad, and with a bit of frantic coding, manages to pull up a list of every single man who looks the slightest bit like Cassian registered to the New Republic's premier digital dating tool.

He contacts one of them, again, when he's drunk. He hasn't had sex since last year, and it's bene even longer since sex itself was of any note whatsoever. He meets the guy at a seedy little motel about an hour away – and shit, he's not really like Cassian at all. He's a little too tall, his features a little too soft. His accent is all wrong too – brash Corellian vowels instead of Cassain's soft Festian lilt.

Bodhi lets the man push him down onto the bed and fuck him anyway. Bodhi is lonely, and the guy, despite being a poor imitation of what he's looking for, is good. He makes Bodhi come twice – once with his hand down Bodhi's trousers about five minutes after they first lay eyes on each other, and then again an hour later, with Bodhi rocking himself furiously down onto his cock.

“Can I see you again?” he asks when Bodhi is getting dressed.

“Sorry,” Bodhi says. “I'm not in town for long.”

Coruscant is a big enough place to get lost in. He doubts that he'll see this one again.

Bodhi doesn't really intend to make a habit out of sleeping with random strangers who bear a passing resemblance to a man he realised he was in love with a year too late. He goes home, turns the shower up as hot as it will go, and sobers up. He aches a little – a good kind of ache, the one that comes after a good fuck.

Problem is, he doesn't feel any less lonely.

When his admittedly ridiculous search for Cassian on the holonet doesn't yield any results, Bodhi starts to dig deeper. He goes to the huge journalism library in the middle of the city, and starts poring through what feels like every paper from the last two years. Publications from Fest, Coruscant, Naboo, Jakku, Yavin IV – every world that has a link to the Rebellion, no matter how tenuous. He runs the most obscure pieces through the translation engines, and then scans them for mention of Cassian, any of his aliases that Bodhi remembers, or just Rebel intelligence officers full stop.

It takes him three days to find it.

Bodhi's heart feels like it's going to stop beating when he sees the headline _'_ **IMPERIAL SYMPATHISERS CARRY OUT LETHAL ATTACK ON ELITE REBEL SPY SQUAD** '. He carries on reading though, because after all this time, all of this longing, this isn't going to be how he finds out, it can't be. The article is tiny, barely a footnote.

_'A Rebel Alliance base on the planet Fest that was thought to be abandoned was today subject to a chemical attack by Imperial sympathisers. The attack, which is believed to have left no survivors, is said to have been a focused assault on what remained of the now-dissolved Alliance's intelligence branch._

_New Republic officials distanced themselves from the reports, with one senior source stating that they 'are not associated with agents affiliated with a cause that simply no longer exists'. Senator Leia Organa, who many feel has not entirely forsaken her more militant views, was unavailable for comment.'_

Bodhi stares at the screen, unaware of anything other than the sound of his own breathing. Cassian is dead. He's dead. Bodhi had entertained it when he first started looking for Cassian, but it was always just a morbid little thought that he'd push to the back of his mind. To see something like this makes it an unmovable certainty. True, Cassian isn't named, but it's his branch, his home planet, his _stupid_ bloody struggle that he wouldn't give up on even after the war was won. If Bodhi allows himself for a moment to believe that Cassian is alive despite all of that, he is stupid and naive, a fool, an id-

Cassian Andor is dead. Bodhi whispers it under his breath, as if saying it out loud will make it easier to bear. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't. He doesn't realise he's crying until the librarian lays a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, sees her lips moving, and can't hear a thing other than _Cassian Andor is dead, Cassian Andor is dead_. He sobs, tries desperately to catch his breath and fucking hell, it's agonising.

-

They would fight sometimes. Cassian would be intent on risking his own life for something that Bodhi could do with his eyes shut, and they'd take their disagreement to one of the dark corridors leading from the command centre, Bodhi's hand tight around Cassian's wrist. Cassian, typically, could never see why the prospect of him dying in combat was so horrifying, and Bodhi would be left near screaming in frustration.

Only once did Bodhi genuinely wound Cassian with what he said, and Bodhi can't stop thinking of it now, as he sits alone in his poky little kitchen. He goes over it in his mind, again and again.

“You don't trust me,” he'd said, the words cold. “You think that because I defected once that I'll do it again.”

Cassian had looked at him, furious. “You think that's what I think of you? That my opinion of you is _that_ low?”

“Well I don't know!” Bodhi said. “You never let me help you, you always put yourself in danger when I could do it instead.”

“If you think,” Cassian gritted out, his jaw tight and his eyes wild, “that I don't let you take on the worst missions of all because I don't trust you, then I don't think that you understand me at all.” He'd looked at Bodhi for a second too long after he'd said it. His hand was pressed flat against the wall next to Bodhi's head, but Cassian didn't draw it into a fist and punch down _hard_ against the concrete. Bodhi knows that he wanted to. Instead, he'd walked away, Bodhi calling after him.

That one had taken a while for them to get over.

Work is a relief. The busier he keeps himself, the less time he has to think about what he's done wrong. He starts to take on longer jobs, ones that take weeks to complete. He works through exhaustion and forgets to eat. He looks awful, so he tries to avoid his reflection like it's an unwelcome house guest. He's all lean muscle now, with barely an ounce of fat on him. _Not good,_ says the old man who lives across the hallway from him.

As the months pass, Bodhi wishes that Chirrut was here. He suspects that if they had all managed to survive, Chirrut would have been the one to knock he and Cassian's heads together.

He never told Chirrut that he remembered him from when he was small. He used to spend his afternoons playing in the temple courtyard, and Chirrut had been there, Baze too, rounding up the children and telling them stories as the sun set. Once Bodhi had fallen asleep in Chirrut's arms, and he'd carried him back to his mother's house, Baze's footsteps a steady beat at his side. Bodhi had woken up about halfway home, but kept his face tucked against Chirrut's chest.

“You want to keep this one,” Baze had said, that voice that was later gruff and stern then soft.

Chirrut had laughed, and held Bodhi close to his chest. He'd fallen asleep again then, trying desperately to stay awake but to no avail.

Bodhi thinks that Baze recognised him once they were on the way back from Eadu, had caught him whispering to a smiling Chirrut when they thought Bodhi was sleeping. They must have assumed that Bodhi had forgotten their other encounters, his childhood memories overridden by crueller, colder ones.

Bodhi has lived through so much, and he has never said enough. Well, he's paying for that now.

-

Two years more, then a third. Bodhi turns thirty-four, and the older he's getting, the more the past is weighing on him. A kind, round-faced medic he goes to speak to tells him that this is normal. Bodhi isn't sure if that makes him feel better or worse. He still sees reminders of his time with the Rebellion everywhere he goes. When he's buying bread at the market, he sees a man place his hand on the small of his partner's back, and the motion is so like how Baze used to touch Chirrut Bodhi almost drops the credits that he's clutching in his hand. An automated navigation system he has installed on his ship sounds exactly like K-2SO, so he gets the trader to come and install another. Jyn is present in the faces of his neighbour's girls: their playful disobedience, the way they laugh, and the determined set of their jaws when presented with something particularly difficult. Sometimes it's so breathtakingly painful Bodhi has to excuse himself to another room and just gasp for air.

Lera, the eldest at all of ten years old, finds him curled over the kitchen sink one day. She rests her little hand against the back of Bodhi's own. “Mama says you need looking after,” she says. “She says that no one should have to be sad on their own.”

Bodhi turns his hand around and holds her tiny one in his palm. “Your mama is a wise woman,” he says.

“Boys are silly,” Lera says, deadpan. “That's why you need someone to help you out sometimes.”

Bodhi thinks of Leia, and smiles. “You remind me of an old friend,” he says to Lera. “She was just as clever as you.”

“Not _as_ clever as me, I bet. I'm top of my class, didn't Momma tell you?”

Bodhi laughs. Yep, there's a little Leia right there.

He sees Leia on some of the news holoshows. She's one of the more forthright senators, and her speeches make their way to the daily politics highlight reels. She looks like she's running on vapours sometimes, powered forwards only by sheer force of will. Bodhi doesn't know if she's still married to Solo. The smuggler and the senator. In another life, that would be the most ridiculous thing that Bodhi's ever heard.

-

Tatooine is strange, sandy like Jedha, vast and largely uninhabited like Jakku – but with a deep, permeating heat that's unmistakably its own. It's also full of rogues, wayfarers and people trying to forget. It's easy to get lost in the crowd. “You can't live on memories alone,” says a wizened old woman in the marketplace as he sways on his feet, the heat too much for someone who hasn't eaten since yesterday. She presses a bowl of chilled soup into his hands and watches him drain it, and then takes it back to ladle more in.

Slowly, he starts to rebuild himself. He eats more, and the concave sweep of his belly fills out again, the muscles on his arms don't look so odd when there's some fat there to cushion them. His hair grows, tentatively at first, and then before long, it's curling around his ears. He keeps it short though. It stays out of his eyes that way. His skin gets weather-beaten from hours out in the hot desert. He has lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes now, ones that don't quite smooth out again after he stops smiling. He turns thirty-five in the middle of a sandstorm that's so violent it makes the windows of his little apartment shake.

He stops renting the apartment in Coruscant. He sends presents to the girls – five of them now, the youngest born just after he left for the final time. Model ships carved from the shells of huge snails, polished wooden rattles, little dolls with outfits made from scraps of Naboo silk. He gets holomails in return, filled with the most minute details of city life, and constant pleas of _come and visit, we miss you_.

He promises that he'll stop by when work brings him their way.

He dreams vividly, violently. Bor Gullet and its long, probing tentacles, the grenade flying into the ship, the sight of an explosion at the very point on the horizon where Baze and Chirrut should be. He dreams of Hoth, of Skywalker being dragged out of a ship half dead, the entire base staring dumbly at his limp form. He dreams of Cassian, his face tight with pain after he takes a blaster bolt to the thigh, the whites of his knuckles as he grips Bodhi's hand while a medic stitches a gash on his side up.

Sometimes, he dreams of things that never came to be. He dreams of Cassian pushing him down onto the bed, kissing his way down his chest before he takes Bodhi in his mouth. That one has Bodhi surging back into consciousness gasping for breath, his legs spread and hips thrusting up uselessly into nothing. He comes without a hand on his cock, and he whines Cassian's name into the dark quietness of his room.

Bodhi is still in love with a ghost, and there's no worse time for that than at night.

He tries searching for Cassian again, because he has to be _sure._ He pays people who are far better at spying than he is to look for him, and all of them return with nothing – just the indecent on Fest that seems to be where Cassian's trail fizzles out abruptly.

“He's gone, lad,” says one dodgy galactic investigator, a tall, broad man with one eye. He doesn't take the fee that he's owed. “Keep it,” he says. “Put it towards your own happiness.”

“I walked out on that quite a few years ago,” Bodhi says bitterly. The spy buys him a drink, and Bodhi gulps it down without a word. The bartender moves to fill his glass again, and Bodhi catches the spy's sole eye trained on him, his expression sad. “Take your pity and fuck off with it, or buy me another drink,” Bodhi says, and the man does as he asks. It's easy to be bold on a planet like Tatooine. You've got to be bold really – so Bodhi leaves his meekness and grows into something new.

Knowing for sure that Cassian is dead doesn't hurt him any more that he is already, oddly enough. Bodhi's spent enough nights rocking back and forth on his bed, keening from the pain of the loss. Now, he accepts it, the finality of it just a dull ache. Cassian died two years after the end of the war, a year after Bodhi saw him last. He died with troops who loved him, and knowing that he wasn't alone is a comfort. He died on his home planet, doing what he was good, no, brilliant at. A fitting end. Not a fair one, or a kind one, but fitting.

-

Thirty-six, and he finds himself on Chandrila. Life is slower paced here, trade prosperous. One of the things Leia manages to pass in the Senate is payments for those whose homes were destroyed during the war. Bodhi, although he'd been off-world for years, is as Jedhan now as when he left. So he gets some credits, not much, but enough. Enough to, at last, settle down. He buys (buys!) himself a little apartment that overlooks the sea. He looks at the rolling waves from his window every morning. He's never swum in the sea – not too many opportunities for that, growing up on a desert planet. Maybe he'll try though. He's not too old to learn something new just yet.

He immerses himself in cooking, tracking down old Jedhan recipes on the holonet. He reads too, a habit that he's just starting to fall into. He wasn't a bookish child, and he's hardly had time to get invested in something as trivial as a story in the intervening years. Now though, he sits in his chair by the window, a worn, ridiculously over-stuffed thing that he found at the market, and for hours at a time, loses himself in words. Poetry is a particular favourite, the rhythm of it soothing when he can't sleep.

Ah, sleeping. That still doesn't come easily. He'll lay awake until the early hours, listening to the waves crashing and rolling outside. When the sound of the sea isn't enough to lull him back to sleep, he gets dressed and heads out again. There's a little bar a short speedrail ride away, and it's full of other fools who have nothing better to do than in the early hours of the morning than drinking and gambling.

Bodhi remembers being frantic with worry during games of Sabacc in his Imperial days. Cheating someone out of their winnings was one thing, but when most of the people that you played with had an insatiable bloodlust too, that made it a little more risky. Now, the sleight of hand comes all too easily, and he feels a grim satisfaction when he manages to con everyone at his table. He's had too many years of practise.

If there's someone sleeping rough on the street outside the bar, he normally tips his winnings straight out of his wallet and into their hands. _You've gone soft in your old age,_ Cassian would tell him, no doubt. Well, Bodhi is glad that he can give himself over to softness and kindness without fear now.

He starts to do well enough that he can stop taking jobs from cargo companies and approach people himself. He rents a little office in town and takes on some people to help him negotiate business. There's Trivix, a statuesque young woman who has a knack for looking murderous when their prospective fees from traders come in a little too low; and Erisi, a short, stocky woman in her thirties who knows everyone worth knowing. When Bodhi sees Trivix lay eyes on Erisi for the first time, he knows that he's just watched someone fall in love. It makes his chest hurt a little, but he pushes it aside. He's good at that now.

They have a protocol droid who lumbers around the office too – Q4N-4. On account of his huge optic sensors that have clearly been taken from another droid that wasn't _quite_ compatible, they just call him Eyes. He helps with statistics and translating mostly. Eyes is nothing like K-2, which Bodhi supposes is better for the future of his business.

Life, impossible as it would have been for him to imagine a few years ago, is good. He starts to make friends, real ones. He smiles at strangers who then become acquaintances, who then become people he sits up laughing with until the early hours of the morning. He doesn't look for a partner though, despite both Eyes and Trivix doing their best to set him up with every man who comes within a two mile radius of their workplace. He overhears Erisi talking to Trivix one day. “You shouldn't push him. He's lost someone, you can tell.”

Trivix drops her voice, but years on surveillance missions have left Bodhi with sharp hearing. “During the war, you mean?”

“Maybe. Anyway, it doesn't matter. He doesn't want anyone else. I don't think anyone would be able to come close.”

Bodhi leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. Grief, a familiar presence, surges up in him like a violent tide. He breathes in and out. Slowly. Once, twice. He goes weeks without hurting, and then regret and sadness slam into him with such force it leaves him breathless. “It's not linear,” the medic had told him years ago. “It comes and goes. If you're prepared for it, it's bearable.” She had squeezed Bodhi's shaking hand then. “You just have to keep going.”

She's right, of course. Life is kind to him most of the time. He spends more of his days smiling than not now, and he doesn't want for anything, not really. He has a home, he has his work, he has friends.

Bodhi takes his grief, shoulders it, and walks on.


	2. Chapter 2

This space station that he's waiting for a client on is nothing short of vile. Too loud, too smelly, too bright. Bodhi realises that he's getting _old,_ has started to relish peace and quiet, the mornings where the beach opposite his apartment is empty, the softness of his bed at the end of a long day. Or, it could just be that after a life that's so far been unreasonably shit, he's just enjoying not having to live from moment to moment.

He's pissed off. The client, a dodgy Corellian who wants to offload ten crates of bogus alcohol, is late. Bodhi almost didn't take the shipment, but then he learnt that it was being delivered to a rich senator's household. The thought of uppity politicians drinking some foul alcohol a teenage boy has brewed in his bathtub had Bodhi laughing so much, he agreed to meet this fool off-world. For a bigger fee of course.

He's regretting it now. The guy probably isn't going to show,. He's probably being quizzed by the galactic police on the contents of the fuel barrels that he's trying to smuggle off-world. Fine. Bodhi can live with that. He hasn't come _too_ far out of his way. He has a room booked for the night, and he's on his third rum of the evening. At a dingy bar that's full of teenagers. Fuck, he really is getting old.

He looks around him. To his right, there's a Twi'lek deep in conversation with a slight, hooded figure. Bodhi cranes his neck a little trying to catch a glimpse of their face, but to no avail. To his left, there's a young man who's doing his best to drain his glass lasciviously and catch Bodhi's eye. Bodhi could take him back to his room. Could, but won't.

“Like what you see?” the man asks. He's short, blond, cocky. A little like Luke, if he squints.

Bodhi shakes his head. “Not really,” he says. “Ten years ago, maybe.” _You're too young for me,_ he means. Force, when did that happen?

“Ah, you're not quite past it yet,” says the man – boy, really.

“I know I'm not,” Bodhi replies. “But you should find someone your own age.”

He gets the hint then, and sticks his lower lip out petulantly. Good. Bodhi turns to the Twi'lek and her cloaked companion again. The Twi'lek stills for a moment, as if she knows that she's being watched, and Bodhi quickly turns around. A Twi'lek called Aiyha had almost garotted him during a skirmish on Dantooine, and he's not overly keen to repeat the experience.

The bartender comes over to refill his glass, and takes a long look at him. “Still waiting on someone?”

Bodhi laughs, and holds out his glass. “Yeah,” he says. “I've been waiting for a long time.” As he speaks, the bar grows silent, and his voice rings out a little too loudly. He can feel the Twi'lek's eyes on him now, her companion's too no doubt. “Still,” he said, watching his glass fill with green-gold liquid. “I have a drink to finish, and a full tank of fuel.”

“More than can be said for many,” says the bartender. “Where are you heading after this?”

“You know what?” Bodhi says, his glass halfway raised to his lips. “I've never been to Corellia. I was supposed to meet a Corellian today, and the whole way here I was thinking that I've never been.”

“Full tank of fuel,” says the bartender. “You'll make it in less than a day.”

Bodhi smiles, and drains his glass. “Let someone else have the room,” he says. “I think I'm going to head back to my ship.”

“Sober up first,” orders the bartender. “I'm not having my job on the line because I let you go and crash your ship.”

Bodhi raises his hands in acquiesce, and orders a glass of water.

Corellia then.

-

Erisi laughs down the line. “So you've decided to take a trip to Corellia without checking the weather forecast first?”

Bodhi looks out of the window and groans. The rain, no, _sleet_ has been falling steadily for hours now. “I didn't even know it had a rainy season!”

Erisi tuts. “Get yourself an umbrella, desert boy. It ain't gonna kill you.”

Bodhi could say that he's spent enough time on Eadu to happily never seen rain again, but he doesn't really want to talk about that. So he tells Erisi that he'll be back in a couple of days, and that yes, he'll be sure to bring her home some rum.

He looks back out of the window, and draws his knees up to his chest. It was silly to come here, really. He has no reason to be on this planet where he knows nobody (well, Solo and Wedge being the exceptions) and he has no idea what he is going to do with his time. The rain comes down harder, and Bodhi opens the window to let it fall against his outstretched palm. He thinks of that climb on Eadu with Cassian all those years ago, how slippery and treacherous the rocks had been beneath his feet. He was scared shitless, but didn't want to show it. Not in front of Cassian.

The rain feels different here. Less like it could cut through you if it came down hard enough. In the distance Bodhi can see green hills, whereas on Eadu it had been huge, formless rocks all the way to the horizon.

Bodhi draws his arm back and closes the window. Darkness is starting to fall, and he doesn't know his way around in broad daylight, let alone after the sun has set. He'll sleep now, and see where his feet take him in the morning.

-

The rain grows more insistent, as if it has personally decided to test Bodhi's resolve. He's soaked through to his shirt, and he grits his teeth. He's survived a war, he's not going to be defeated by weather. So he walks, and walks, and walks. Corellia is lovely, leafy and tranquil; and Bodhi can't help but wonder why, Wedge aside, almost every person he's met from this planet is so damn infuriating. It's the rain that's driven them to it, clearly.

The droid at the check-in desk had told him that there's an underground market somewhere, and Bodhi looks up at the signs that hang from the high stone walls of this street. He's heading in the right direction. Good. His shoes are full of water, and he needs something hot to drink.

Getting out of the rain makes him feel nothing short of euphoric. The air is suddenly close and warm, heavy with the smells of cooking. The constant hum of noise is nice – it reminds Bodhi of home. It's easier to think about Jedha now. Bodhi pictures street musicians and spice traders and pilgrims waving thuribles filled with incense, rather than dust and disappearing horizons.

He buys a cup of spiced caf from a man with a tattooed face, and he chatters away to himself in a language Bodhi doesn't understand as he makes it. When he passes the caf over to Bodhi, he smiles, revealing a mouth full of bejewelled teeth. Bodhi asks to take his picture, and his grin looks like it could split his face in two.

Bodhi leans against a wall and sips from his cup. He's come here on nothing other than a whim, and now he's back doing what he always does. Watching the world go by, standing on the outskirts of the action. Frustration settles in the pit of his stomach and makes his drink taste sickly-sweet in his mouth. He wishes that he could understand himself sometimes. He wishes that he didn't feel so...muddled. Guided by nothing more than instinct.

Someone bumps into Bodhi, jostling the drink in his hand. Within a second they're gone, and he catches the briefest glimpse of a slight figure bundled up in a huge coat before they disappear into the crowd.

As they walk away, something seizes Bodhi. A whim, an urgent tug of instinct. Hard to ignore, especially when you've been living your life according to it thus far. Bodhi sighs, and tosses the cup into the bin. He heads off the way the person came.

Bodhi's mother always used to say that he could get the measure of a person in seconds, suss out a situation in a minute. “You're a clever little thing,” she'd say as she brushed his hair. “Trust your heart, and you'll be fine.”

 _Well,_ he thinks to himself. _I'm still alive. Fine I'm not sure about, but I'm still alive._

It's a few minutes before he sees the person in the coat again, but then – ah! A flash of blue, a fur-lined hood, a gloved hand coming up to tug at the scarf that's covering the bottom half of their face. The gesture reminds Bodhi of something, or someone. A character in a holodrama, no doubt. He does watch a lot of them.

The crowd starts to thin out around him, and Bodhi realises that most of the market is now behind him. The only stalls left in front of him belong to modders, scrap dealers, bone merchants. The ground slopes up gently, and a great stone archway. There, the person wearing the coat is waiting, leaning against the wall, their back turned to the pouring rain. They're looking down at a holopad, trying to appear inconspicuous. A spy, then. Or assassin. Or someone waiting for a lover. The only thing that is certain is that they're wanting to attract as little attention as possible.

Bodhi stays close to the wall, taking advantage of the protection that shadows provide. There are less lights in this end of the market, so it's easy for him to go unnoticed. A strange feeling comes over Bodhi when he looks at their hands again. Their fingers are tapered, their nails bitten down to tiny little stumps. When one of those hands comes up to their face and pulls down the scarf that's covering their mouth, Bodhi is halfway to realising,

He can't hear anything other than the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. It can't be, it can't be, he's fucking _dead_.

And yet, standing there, living and breathing, is Cassian.

Bodhi's legs almost give out from underneath him, and he has to press a hand to the wall to steady himself. Cassian, or not-Cassian, a ghost, a hallucination, casts his eyes over the marketplace. To his right, and then in a long sweep, over to Bodhi and _there._ There's no mistaking that look. Cassian looks straight into Bodhi's eyes, and the world shifts.

Bodhi presses a hand to his mouth, because he's making a noise, isn't he? Crying out, gasping, shouting Cassian's name. He can't hear anything though, just the wild thud-thud of his own heart. Cassian is as grey as the wall behind him, his face frozen in shock. Bodhi's legs carry him forwards, and he's running now, and so is Cassian, and the distance is so small and so great all at once.

He reaches out and fists his hands in the front of Cassian's jacket, and it's still the same one, that busted up old thing he was wearing when they first met. Force, it even smells the same. “Is it really you?” he asks, and suddenly the world around them is loud again, and they're just two people in the middle of a crowded market. Unremarkable, to anyone who might be watching.

“It's me,” Cassian says. “Oh, I've be-”

“I thought you were dead,” Bodhi says. He's not crying, which given the situation, is unexpected. He's breathing quickly, and Cassian's hand is there on his upper arm, rubbing in little circles. “Where were you?”

Bodhi looks at him then, really looks. It is him, it really is. He's older and looks _awful,_ sallow-skinned and just on the edge of too thin, but it's him. Those eyes, that sharp, serious face.

“I've been-” and he stops then, looking out across the marketplace again. Then his eyes are back on Bodhi. “I can't believe it,” he whispers. “It's really you. I've been looking for you for so long.”

“I _mourned_ you,” Bodhi says. “I've spent years grieving, and now you're here. Where _were_ you?” he says.

“Everywhere,” Cassian says. “Everywhere that you weren't.” He laughs, a tiny little thing that Bodhi wants to hear over and over again. “I am dead. Well, officially. It's a long story. Listen, Bodhi, you've got to hide. Just for a little while, there's something that I need to do-”

“What?!” Bodhi says. “What on earth could you need to do right now that is-”

Cassian interrupts him, his eyes frantic. “I'm on a job. For,” and he hesitates for a moment. “For Leia,” he whispers. He's shaking, and he looks how Bodhi feels. Overwhelmed.

“Leia?!” Bodhi says, doing his best to keep his voice quiet too. “Cassian, what's going on?”

He doesn't miss the way that Cassian's hand is now resting on the blaster that's at his hip. “There's a group of Imperial loyalists meeting here. I'm to observe.”

“With your blaster?” Bodhi asks. Cassian looks at him; that level, captain's orders stare.

“They're dangerous.” he says. “ _You_ don't even have a blaster.”

“I'm on holiday!” Bodhi says, and the ridiculousness of the situation really isn't lost on him. “I'm staying here. I think if I let you out of my sight I'll go back to my hotel room, fall asleep and think that this was a dream.”

Cassian sighs. “Of all the places to meet again,” he says. Then, he's looking over Bodhi's shoulder. “Quick,” he whispers. “Behind me. Don't move. Don't say anything. Don't even look if you can help it.”

Bodhi does as he says, stepping back so that he's in the shadows once more. Cassian resumes his position leaning against the wall, looking at his holopad before glancing up again. His hands are shaking now though.

The men (and of course they're all men, Bodhi thinks to himself) who Cassian watches are dressed in black, and they all belong to a certain level of thug. There's three of them, and Cassian swipes at his holopad furiously. The men don't even look their way, totally unaware that two people who helped to bring down the order they idolise are standing right opposite them.

They stand there for a while, talking amongst themselves. Cassian, amongst many other things, was, no, _is_ impossibly good at lip reading. He's doing that now, looking at the men and then back down at his holopad. Eventually, the man who Bodhi assumes is the ringleader passes a datachip to one of the others. Then there's more chatting, a lot of laughter and then finally, sickeningly, a salute. Bodhi looks at Cassian, and he's glowering unreservedly.

He comes to sit with Bodhi when they're gone. He lets his head fall back against the wall, and he sighs.

“Bad?” Bodhi asks.

“Annoying,” Cassian says in response. “They're going to convene on a planet that's on the other side of the galaxy, and I'm going to have to follow them.”

“You're joking,” says Bodhi. Cassian doesn't say anything. “Oh, come _on_. This is not how this was meant to go.”

“I don't _want_ to go,” says Cassian. “I'd like to walk out on this right now and come with you.”

“Duty first though, right?” Bodhi says. “I can't believe this. I should be crying, shouldn't I? I should be passed out on that floor, or screaming, or-”

“You're probably in shock,” Cassian says. “A lot has just happened in the last few minutes.”

“How long do you have?” says Bodhi. “To talk. Because I think that we need to do that before I go mad.”

“A couple of hours,” says Cassian. “Where are you staying?”

“Ten minutes from here. If that. I've been walking around in circles all day but it's not far.”

“Come on,” Cassian says. “Let's talk there. I have a feeling that if we hang around for too long, our friends from earlier might make another appearance.”

-

Bodhi sits on the edge of the bed. His clothes are soaked through with rain, but changing out of them and getting dry means letting Cassian out of his sight, and Bodhi can't even entertain the thought. Cassian stands opposite him, leaning against the desk. He's drying his hair off with a towel, and when he finishes Bodhi notices a few grey hairs snaking through the brown. Cassian is only a year older than him and he looks old and tired, fraying at the edges.

“I looked for you for years,” he says, and Cassian starts. “I paid people to look for you, and every single one told me that you'd died two years after the war finished, in some frozen little bunker on Fest.”

“I was the only one from Intelligence who wasn't there. Draven, everybody else, they all died. I was off world, due to meet them at a rendezvous point three miles from the base the next day.” As he talks he wrings the towel in his hands, over and over.

Realisation starts to filter through all of Bodhi's memories. “You let people think that you were dead, didn't you? You just let people assume that you'd been killed so that you could start again?”

“That was the plan,” says Cassian, and his face is grave. “I was going to settle down somewhere, find a job, get in contact with you again.”

“What happened?”

“Turns out that fighting in a war since you were a child doesn't prepare you for peace. That first year, I ran into so many Imperial loyalists. They weren't even rich, older people who had benefited from what Palpatine had done, they were young like me and you.”

“So you started fighting again,” says Bodhi. “Except you didn't have anyone to answer to.”

Cassian nods. “Draven said that I was unpredictable without direct orders – and well, he was right. One moment I'd be cruel, calculating, the perfect spy. Then I'd be remorseful, going off the grid for weeks at a time.”

“You should have had some _help_ ,” Bodhi says. “That's not right, you were suffering, you were struggling to adjust-”

“You think the New Republic has time for that? Patching up old Rebellion hunting dogs? No, they only cared about me when it became apparent that I was becoming, ah, what was the word?” He drums his fingers against the desk, and then laughs. “ _A vigilante._ ” he says, no, spits. “So they let me come back in. Sent me out on jobs that they didn't want to dirty their own hands with. Leia aside, most of them probably wish I'd died in that bunker,” Cassian says. He says it like he's just talking about the weather, and Bodhi can see just how hardened to it all he's become, even more than when he'd seen him last.

“And that made you happy?” Bodhi asks. “To have a cause again?”

“Do I look happy?” Cassian asks.

“You look tired.”

“Yeah, well I feel it too. I need out,” Cassian says. “There's no resources, Leia can't keep calling me in to trail some fringe groups across the galaxy. There's something coming, something big, but the Republic don't want to think about that. I'll fight for them when the time comes, she knows I will but-” and he sags at the waist then, his head dropping forwards. “It's a half life,” he says after a while. “I'm powerless to do anything, really.”

“So this,” Bodhi says hopefully, “is your last job?”

“As good as,” Cassian says. “I've got nowhere to go, and no idea what to do next, but yes. Leia says that I'll help no one if I get myself killed now, before the real work begins.”

“Do you think that it'll come to that? We wiped out the Empire, we bankrupted them, we seized their weapons!”

“Never underestimate evil,” Cassian says. Then, he speaks a little more softly. “I hope it won't come to that though,” he says. “That's one thing I never lost. Hope. Hope that I'd find my way, that I'd see you again.”

“Corny,” Bodhi says, and that makes Cassian laugh. He comes to sit next to Bodhi at the edge of the bed.

“I spent so long looking for you. Between jobs, I'd travel all over. I went to Jedha first, to the new settlement they built. I thought that you'd go home, I was certain of it. As soon as I stepped off of that shuttle though, I knew I wouldn't find you there. It was so different to what I remembered. I can't imagine how jarring it would be for someone who grew up in the old city.”

“I haven't been back since it was destroyed,” Bodhi says. “I thought about it for a while, but it just didn't feel right. It wouldn't be home. Not really.”

“So you travelled, I'm guessing.”

“Yes. With a crew from Jedha actually, doing relief work. Then I moved to Coruscant.”

“That's the part I did know,” Cassian says. “I had a job there – to take out a senator's son who had Imperial leanings. While I was there, I found your address. That little apartment block near the spice ports. Except when I got there, you'd gone. The new tenants had been living there for a few months, they said. I asked if they had any contact details for you, but they didn't even know your name.”

“Tatooine,” Bodhi says. “I was on Tatooine by then.”

“That's where you're living now?” Cassian asks.

Bodhi shakes his head. “I'm living on Chandrila now, just outside Hanna City. It's a little town by the coast. It's not much, but-”

“You're happy?” Cassian asks.

“As good as,” Bodhi says. “I get by.”

“Give me your comm number,” Cassian says. “I'll get in touch with you once I've finished what I need to, I'll come find you, I promise.”

“How long will you be?” Bodhi says, and he can hear that his voice is a little frantic. “I can wait here until you're done, I don't mind!”

“I have no idea,” says Cassian, his face grim. “It could be a day, it could be weeks, Go home, Bodhi. Wait for me there.”

Bodhi groans. “No, that's not fair. I have so much to say, and there's still so much you haven't told me.”

“I'll come back to you,” Cassian says, and he reaches for Bodhi's face, his thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone. “I won't lose you again.” He moves in close, so close, and for one charged moment Bodhi thinks that he's going to kiss him, but he just brings their foreheads together instead. Their mouths are still close, agonisingly so, but Bodhi doesn't close the gap. “Give me your comm number,” Cassian says again. They're so close it's not even a whisper, just the words leaving him on a breath. “And I'll give you my word.”

-

After six, nearly seven, years, an interlude of a few weeks at the most should be nothing. It is nothing, but Bodhi feels winded, like he's been cut open and rearranged. He thinks of Cassian constantly – how worn down he'd looked. Two months pass, and Bodhi is just about giving up hope when his comm buzzes in the middle of the night. Bodhi doesn't dare hope as he fumbles for it in the dark, but there it is: a message in Cassian's typically terse tone. Bodhi it reads over and over, afraid that it will disappear if he looks away.

**B,**

**Nightmare job. About to board a shuttle to Hanna. Will land 05:15 your time. Need to destroy this comm. I don't know if you'll see this, but it's all I can manage. Sorry.**

**I did keep my word though.**

**Cassian.**

Bodhi reads it out loud, whispering the last line over and over. He presses his fingers to the screen, directly over Cassian's name. He looks over at the clock. It's just gone one, and he could easily sleep for another three hours before he has to start getting ready to leave. He tries to at first, lays down and looks at the ceiling. After half an hour though, he gives up. He keeps reaching for his comm every few minutes, just to check that he hasn't imagined it.

Impossibly, but somehow certainly, Cassian is coming back. To him.

Bodhi smiles, and the force of it makes his face ache. Sleep won't come now, whether Bodhi wants it to or not. So he pulls on some clothes and heads outside. The moonlight is thin and silvery, and for hours, he walks. When the time comes for him to head to the spaceport, he just throws a bag into the back seat of his speeder and heads off. Even sitting still at the steering controls is torturous. When he's parked up his speeder, he leans against a pillar that faces the landing pad. It's a cold morning, damp and foggy. The sea is heaving, pulling itself back and forth against the shore. Bodhi can hear it, and he breathes in and out in time with it.

The transports all land here, and if it wasn't for the fog Bodhi would be able to see the ships making their descent. He looks at his watch. Eleven minutes past five. Fine. Four minutes to go. Assuming that the ship was running on time. Or that it hasn't broken up into a thousand flaming pieces as it re-entered the atmosphere. Bodhi brings his hands together in something that to someone else, would look a lot like prayer.

Three minutes, and a droid belonging to one of his neighbours lumbers past with a vegetable cart. “Master Rook!” it says cheerfully, as five bunches of fat purple berries come loose and land on the pavement. “You're up early!”

“Just waiting for a friend,” Bodhi says. He wishes more than anything that he could just be left to himself right now. Three people have come over to him already, remarking on the fog, the chill, on how early it was for Bodhi to be up and awake. _Leave me alone_ , he'd tried to communicate with his eyes. _Who cares if I'm up early or late or not at all, just let me be._

One minute. The klaxon on the docking bay wall sounds, and a crowd begins to gather behind the departure gate. Fifty seconds. A man in the queue holds a young boy's hand, and he points up. Forty seconds. There's a noise now, an unmistakable whirr of an engine, the low groan of metal cooling down. Thirty seconds. A shape emerges from the mist, a bulky, shapeless transport ship that is the most wonderful thing that Bodhi has ever seen. Twenty seconds. It lowers, and lowers, and lowers. Ten seconds. It makes contact with the landing pad. An eternity. The doors open.

It's different this time, because he knows that Cassian is meant to be on board. By different he means borderline agonising. The passengers shuffle off, and Bodhi chants _come on, come on, come on_ under his breath.

Oh. Oh, there he is. Bodhi just watches him for a moment, allows himself the luxury of just looking. Cassian looks tired, like he could fall asleep standing up. Bodhi entertains the thought of picking him up – and he could, Bodhi's stronger now than he was even three years ago – and laying him down on his bed.

Then Cassian looks at him, and Bodhi stops thinking. Stops breathing, almost. Cassian raises a hand in greeting, an absurdly understated action considering that barely two months ago, neither of them knew that the other was alive. He starts to walk towards Bodhi, and there's something about the way he's holding himself, something just a little off. By the time he makes it over, Bodhi is frowning.

“You're hurt,” he says.

Cassian smiles. “Hello to you too,” and Bodhi, without thinking, pulls him into a hug. Cassian stiffens and lets out a little whine, which by his standards, means that he's probably in excruciating pain.

Bodhi lets go immediately, and looks Cassian in the eye. “Right, tell me.”

Cassian winces, and brings a hand to his side. “Ribs,” he says. “Cracked, I think. I did it a week ago.”

“Please tell me that you've seen a medic,” Bodhi says, lacking the energy to even sound surprised. It's incredible really, how he and Cassian are falling back into how things were all those years ago. Cassian being an idiot, and Bodhi being the other idiot who's fool enough to worry about him.

“No,” says Cassian bluntly. “I've taken enough stims and drunk enough caf to keep me going, and now they're starting to wear off.” He must be feeling awful if he's being this honest, Bodhi thinks. So instead of arguing, and without a medical wing to march Cassian to, he just nods.

“Alright,” he says. “We'll get you some painkillers, and then you'll tell me what happened.”

“I'll get a room somewhere,” Cassian says.

“Oh no,” says Bodhi. “You're coming home with me.” The firmness in his voice surprises them both, but Cassian comes willingly, setting down his bag in Bodhi's little speeder and letting him drive without any further protest.

-

The first thing that Bodhi sees when he turns the key in the lock and pushes his front door open is the wallpaper that's peeling just above the kitchen window. Then it's the sink, with yesterday's dishes still piled high in it. Then he thinks of his bedroom, and the clothes he'd left on the floor when he rushed to get changed this morning. Silently, internally, he curses himself.

“Nice,” says Cassian. “It's nice.” He's leaning against the door frame awkwardly, avoiding putting too much pressure on his left side.

Bodhi rolls his eyes. “You are as bad at lying as you are staying out of trouble,” Bodhi says. “Here, go and sit down, I'll just go and clean up a little, there-”

“Bodhi, it's fine. Really. I just want to sleep.”

Right. Of course. Bodhi feels a little disappointed. For weeks he's imagined Cassian stepping into his apartment and then the pair of them talking for hours, through sunrises and sunsets. Still, he shows Cassian the spare room, and stands awkwardly in the doorway as he unpacks what little possessions are in his bag.

The day unfolds with Bodhi tiptoeing around his home while Cassian sleeps. It's strange to say the least.

He hears Cassian retching in the middle of the night, great gasping heaves accompanied by little noises of pain. Bodhi knows that feeling. Days of stims and artificial gravity can leave you feeling like you're bobbing about like a raft on water when you're back on solid ground. Bodhi sighs, and pulls on a jumper before creeping to the fresher. He taps on the door. “Cassian?” he says softly. “Hey, are you alright?”

The answer comes in the form of Cassian being sick again,. Bodhi tries the door. It's not locked, which means that Cassian really must be feeling like hell. “I'm coming in,” he says, and all of a sudden, he aches for Jyn, someone who could just get someone up and feeling well again from sheer force of will.

Cassian has his face resting against the toilet seat, and he's breathing a little heavily, his had pressed to his side. Bodhi crouches down on the floor next to him. “How are you feeling?” he asks, which is stupid.

“Like shit,” Cassian croaks. “I think I'm getting old.”

Bodhi knows how he feels. Lately, he's unable to just shake off a sleepless night or too much to drink like he did when he was in his twenties.”Tell me about it,” he says, and leans his head back against the wall. “You should eat something,” he says after a while. “Now that you've got everything out of your system.”

“Remember that stew they used to dish up back on Hoth?” Cassian murmurs. “You said that it could heal the dead, it was that good.”

“Hah!” Bodhi laughs, and Cassian smiles too, a tired, soft thing. “I do remember. That stuff got me through some rough times.” He pushes himself back up off of the floor, and holds out both hands for Cassian to take. “Come on,” he says. “I'll make you something.”

Cassian might not be feeling great, but he does have the energy to look incredulous. “ _You_?” he says. “Cook?”

“I've been learning,” Bodhi says. “I've been busy, you know. All this time.”

“Do you think that we're different people now?” Cassian asks, and his voice is suddenly so, so serious. Weighed down by all the distance travelled, all the time that's passed.

“Yeah,” Bodhi says. “I think we are. I don't think that you can really live through what we have and not be, you know?” He's not sure if that's what Cassian wants to hear, but he's lied too much and not said enough for too long. He gestures with his hand again. “Come on,” he says. _Now get up,_ he urges inside his own head, as if that's the hardest part.

Cassian looks at him, and for once that calm, pinpoint stare is focused on him alone. It should be disconcerting. It's not.

He takes Bodhi's hand.

Bodhi's kitchen is tiny, and there's barely enough room for one person to move around without knocking pots off of the shelves. So Cassian takes up his normal post – standing in the doorway and watching. Bodhi doesn't really mind. He chops some vegetables – little pink chillies and those strange curly green beans that you can buy armfuls of for a credit at the market. There's stock in the fridge, and some soypro, and he stirs, fries and- _ah! -_ almost forgets the noodles that he'd saved for another day. He hums as he works. It's soothing, cooking. It's like flying, really. A series of actions leading to a final outcome.

“Where'd you learn?” Cassian asks him when they sit down to eat. He pokes at one of the vegetables like it's going to spring out of the bowl and bite him on the nose.

“Taught myself,” Bodhi says. “I spent a few years living badly – drinking too much, not eating enough. There's only so much you can do to yourself before you start to...” and he struggles to find his next word.

“I know,” Cassian says, and that's enough. “I know what you mean.” He starts to eat. Slowly, so it doesn't come straight back up again. He's so _thin_. Bodhi wonders how often he gets a chance to just sit down and enjoy a plate of food. Cassian looks up at him, and points his fork at the bowl. “This is good,” he says. “You're good.” His eyes catch the evening light that's streaming in through the windows and the brown bursts into gold.

-

Of course, it doesn't last for too long. After Cassian catches up on the sleep he'd held off with the stims, he can't drift off. The lack of sleep and the pain in his ribs makes him irritable, and Bodhi knows that he's fretting, knows that he should just leave Cassian be, but. But.

Worrying is what he does. It's probably what he's best at, annoyingly. No amount of travelling or ageing has dulled his ability to drive himself mad about whether he's taking care of the people he lo- _likes_ well enough. So he hovers like a useless little swamp-fly, buzzing and needling and _ugh._ Cassian is incapable of letting anyone care for him, and wants to retreat somewhere deep down inside himself when he's hurt. Which, unfortunately for everyone involved, has led to _this._

“Just,” and Cassian grits his teeth, “let me do this. I'm fine. I'm fine.”

“You're not,” says Bodhi, and Cassian glares at him. “You're twisting too much, you're going to hurt your ribs, y-”

“You think I haven't realised that?!” Cassian says, and flings the bacta bandage back down onto the mattress. He's shirtless, which a few months ago would have been the sort of thing that Bodhi had extremely detailed fantasies about, but right now he's trying to tend to a nasty gash on his side. Bodhi thinks that it's infected. Cassian does not. Bodhi had bought the bacta patches, which had set off this whole sorry argument in which Cassian, despite insisting that he didn't need the patches, was trying to stick them onto himself just to prove that he could.

“Fine,” Bodhi says. “I'll go.”

“Thank you,” Cassian says. It's sharp, the way he says it. Like the words are sour in his mouth.

Bodhi makes it to the living room door before he thinks _hang on a minute_ , and turns on his heel to head back the way he came. Cassian looks back up at him, mouth agape. “I am thirty-six years old,” Bodhi says. “This is my home, I'm not going to sit in the other room like a naughty child!”

“Stop fretting so much,” Cassian says. “That was always your trouble.”

“Sorry for caring,” Bodhi says, and Force, that was petulant.

“I don't need babying,” says Cassian. “I'm alright. Just give me a minute.”

“Why did you come here?” Bodhi asks. “If I’m _so_ meddlesome and irritating, why did you come?” They still haven't talked, not properly. Cassian has been here for four days and they haven't even fucking _talked._

“What kind of question is that?” Cassian says, and Bodhi wants to scream.

“You are impossible,” he spits out, and he thinks of the way Cassian used to carry on after all those awful missions, throwing everyone's concern back at them until they snapped. Which is exactly what Bodhi is doing now. “I'm going out,” he says. “I need some air. There's leftovers in the fridge.”

“Bodhi-” Cassian starts, but Bodhi just raises his hand.

“Save it,” he says. “Save it for when this conversation is going to go somewhere.”

He goes to the beach. It's freezing, but not like the cold Bodhi grew up with on Jedha. That was dry, harsh enough that it felt like the wind would strip you down to your bones. Here, it's wet, salty, weighty. The sea crashes against the rocks, and a few seconds later, drops of water will land on Bodhi's face. He sticks his tongue out to catch some of them. When he was little and all that he could see from his window was endless sand, the idea of the sea had fascinated him. The tug of the tide, the way the water curls into barrels before it breaks against the shore, even the smell of it.

It's calming.

Bodhi thinks of Cassian. If he turns his back and looks up, he'll be able to see his living room window. He doesn't. Instead, he looks out at the sea and seethes. Cassian is here, which is all that he's wanted for years. He's there in Bodhi's tiny little apartment, living and breathing and real. He's here, and Bodhi has wanted him for so long, and now he doesn't have a fucking clue what to do next.

He's not sure who he's more angry at; Cassian for being a stubborn prick, or himself for being, well, himself.

He calls Erisi when it gets too cold to sit out here for a moment longer.

“Hey!” she says. “What's up boss?”

“Don't call me boss,” he says. “It makes me feel ancient. Listen, I'm, um- sorry. Can I-” His voice wobbles treacherously, and he closes his eyes.

“Alright,” Erisi says. “Let's go and have a drink. You can tell me what's eating at you.”

So they meet at a little bar just on the edge of town, and Bodhi does. For the first time in years – sorry, correct that, _ever –_ he tells someone what's happened to him. He starts on Jedha, then his stint with the Empire, then the Rebellion, and then Coruscant, Tatooine and then, finally, Cassian. Cassian features a lot, actually. Bodhi doesn't get drunk, which makes the whole hour it takes him to get through it even more depressing. Erisi, bless her heart, just sits there and nods.

“And now,” Bodhi says, feeling worn out, “he's sitting there in my spare bedroom and I have no idea what to do. With him. Force, no, not like that.” He lets his head fall down against the polished wood of the table, and sighs. “I just don't know what to do.” Pitiful. Erisi fills up his glass.

“You fought your war,” and she _always_ says that. 'Your war', as if it was something that she must have missed during an afternoon nap. “You won, and then you thought that everything would be easy after that. Well, winning was just the start, wasn't it? Then you've got to learn to live all over again. You lost your way, but now you're settled. Your friend? He's nowhere near that yet.”

“So how do I help him?” Bodhi says, feeling, well, helpless.

“Talking, I suspect, would be a good place to start.”

Bodhi looks up at her. “I had a terrible feeling that you were going to say that.” He drains his glass, and holds it out. Erisi just looks at him.

When he makes it back to his place, it's getting dark. He fumbles with his key a little – not because he's drunk, but because it's absolutely freezing, and his fingers aren't really cooperating. When he pushes the door open, he sees that the light in the spare bedroom is on, the door pushed to. Bodhi goes to get a glass of water from the kitchen, and gulps it down standing at the sink. Knowing that he can't put it off any longer, he goes and taps on the door. “Can I come in?” he says.

A pause. “It's your apartment,” comes the reply, terse and wary.

Bodhi nudges the door open with his elbow, but doesn't step into the room. Cassian is in bed, propped up on his side with cushions that he's taken from the sofa. He looks small. Soft. A lot like Bodhi remembers, actually. Cassian tries not to show it, but that's what he is, underneath it all. Slight and soft and kind.

“How are you feeling?” Bodhi asks.

“Better,” Cassian says. “The patches, they helped.” He takes a breath. “Thank you.”

“Good,” Bodhi says, and then the silence is stretching out awkwardly. Cassian just looks at him, clearly expecting Bodhi to make the next move. Bodhi sighs. “Fine. I'm sorry. For, you know. Being- being a lot.”

“You didn't need to apologise. Look, _I'm_ sorry. I've been ungrateful, and I'm going to find somewhere to stay soon, as-”

“No!” Bodhi says, and he steps into the room and reaches towards Cassian without thinking. _Shit._ Cassian looks at him levelly. Bodhi knows that look. He knows it from the last seconds before an ambush, when Cassian would weigh up the consequences of his next step. Bodhi breathes out slowly, trying to regain what little composure he had in the first place. “I don't want you to go,” he says.

“I don't want to go,” says Cassian. “But I don't want to upset you. You seemed pretty sad this morning, and that was my fault.”

The creeping unease that's been building in him for a few days suddenly peaks, and Bodhi knows exactly what's going to happen next. “I just, _ugh,_ okay, give me a second.” He turns, walks out of the room and for a moment, considers leaping headfirst out of the window. He just stands in the hallway though, arms folded across his chest, rocking back and forth on his heels. He hates this - how out of nowhere he'll just start feeling so tight and wrong and anxious, and his words get all muddled in his mouth, and Cassian is right there, he is right there, right there, right th-

“Hey,” comes Cassian's voice, and it feels like it should be far way, but he's standing in front of Bodhi, his hands braced on Bodhi's shoulders. “Bodhi, you're fine. I'm here.”

“I'll be alright,” Bodhi manages to get out. “I just feel a bit, uh, a bit-”

“Panicky?” Cassian says, and his voice is so gentle.

“Yeah,” says Bodhi. He feels tiny, and scared, and his breath is coming too quickly.

“All right,” says Cassian. “Let's sit down.”

This is a familiar routine. A well-rehearsed scene on a new stage. Cassian used to sit up with him when he'd feel so scared and shaky it felt like his skin would burst. He'd rub at the small of Bodhi's back, little motions that Bodhi would breathe in time with. _Deep breaths_ , he'd say, and when it got really bad, he'd hold Bodhi's hair back from his face and look into his eyes. _You've got all the air in the world. That's it._

“Deep breaths,” Cassian says now, perched on the edge of Bodhi's bed with him. “You've got all the air in the world. That's it.”

Bodhi starts to cry, which is incredibly embarrassing but also feels a lot like relief. It also makes it a lot harder to catch his breath, and Cassian is there, cradling Bodhi's face in his hands. “Hey,” he says, over and over again. “Just focus on me.”

It passes, eventually. Bodhi's chest feels sore, and his face is sticky and hot from tears, but it passes. He's shuddering, and Cassian just pulls him to his chest as best he can, trying to avoid pressing Bodhi up against his injured side. He's wearing one of Bodhi's t-shirts, a soft worn thing that has made it all the way from Coruscant to here. That makes Bodhi cry harder for a little while again, and Cassian just runs his hands through Bodhi's hair. It's a motion that says _I'm ready when you are, if you are at all._ If Bodhi doesn't want to talk about it, fine.

Bodhi does want to talk.

He coughs, and tries to coach his voice into something steady. “I think I'm a bit overwhelmed” he says, pathetically. “I've spent so long wishing that you could just be here and now you are and I don't really know what to do. Like, thinking that someone is dead for years and then having them sleeping in your spare room, is that a normal thing to deal with? I don't really know how I'm meant to feel.”

“But you want me to stay?” Cassian asks. His hand is warm on Bodhi's shoulder.

“I missed you. I never got a chance to say goodbye to you, but I thought that I'd see you again. But then I saw that newspaper report, and then I hired people to look for you and they said you were dead, that I was wasting my time. And I really fucking _missed_ you.” He wants to say I love you, I love you, I love you. Over and over until he's hoarse.

“I'm here now,” Cassian says against Bodhi's hair. “I won't go anywhere.”

“Did you miss me?” Bodhi asks. “As much as I missed you? Because I thought that it'd kill me sometimes.”

“I missed you,” Cassian says. “More than anything, I missed you.”

Bodhi tilts his head up, and Cassian looks down at him. Their mouths are inches apart, if that. Bodhi could kiss him, but he doesn't know if Cassian wants to, and above all else, he feels worn out. Another day, he thinks. When he's feeling braver.

“I think,” Bodhi whispers, “we both need to adjust. Don't we? To living normally?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, how?”

“We'll figure it out, Bodhi. We'll figure it out.”

-

Here's the thing: Bodhi is in love with Cassian. He has been for years. Just not at the right time. He's spent years thinking that Cassian was dead, and during that time, fell even more in love with him. In love with a memory, a what-if. Now that Cassian is here, that love has solidified and grown strong, fleshed out at last.

The problem is, and it's quite a big one, is that Bodhi has no idea if Cassian feels as he did back then. Cassian touches him gently and laughs with him and Force, he just understands him. Since Galen though, Bodhi doesn't really know how to judge someone's feelings. Cassian loved him years ago, way back when, but now? Bodhi has no idea. Cassian is older now, worn down and despite what he'd like Bodhi to believe, tired.

Talking would be the sensible option – but Cassian is here now, settled in Bodhi's little spare bedroom, drinking his caf, helping him unload shipments at the spaceport. He fits in amongst the minutiae of Bodhi's life, and Bodhi really doesn't want to ruin that. Besides, Cassian isn't talking either.

Defecting from the Empire and then fighting with the Rebellion meant that Bodhi could avoid growing up for a while. Sure, he fought in battles that people will talk about for thousands of years, influenced the course of the galaxy but. But. He never once had to think of where his own life was going, or who he'd like to share it with. After Galen, he wouldn't have let himself even if he had the chance.

Now though, he feels something unfurling in him, something familiar and tender and oh-

Hope. That's what it is.

That's always what gets you in the end, isn't it?

-

Cassian is good at fixing things. He can take something apart with his hands and examine it, lay out a hundred different pieces and one by one, figure out how they're meant to come together. He's calculating by nature, always weighing up the chances before committing to an action. Careful is the word Bodhi is looking for. Precise.

So when Bodhi opens the door to his office and Eyes comes lolloping towards them, one arm swinging wildly, he knows that Cassian is wincing. “What the _fuck_ is that?” he asks under his breath.

“This,” Bodhi says, “is my droid. Eyes, this is Cassian. He's an old friend.”

“Hello!” says Eyes, his huge eyes swivelling madly from Cassian to Bodhi to ceiling.

“You're broken,” says Cassian bluntly.

“As are you,” Eyes says. A whirr, and he continues. “You have a total of three broken ribs, one of which is 78 percent healed. The other two are only slightly be-”

Bodhi raises a hand. “Eyes, that's alright. I've been living with him for four weeks, I'm quite aware he's seen better days.” Turning towards Cassian, he lowers his voice. “You told me your ribs were cracked. Not broken.”

“Please let me fix your droid,” says Cassian, ignoring Bodhi's question completely.

“I do not object to that proposal,” says Eyes. “My left arm is no longer functional, and my joints are extremely bothersome.”

This is how Eyes comes to reside in Bodhi's spare bedroom. Bodhi sleeps on the sofa, and after much protesting on Cassian's part, he agrees to take Bodhi's bed. “Just until I'm healed,” he says with incredible seriousness, as if Bodhi sacrificing his bed is the most significant development in their friendship so far. Bodhi may have saved him from certain death just over a decade ago, but judging by the way Cassian has to be pushed into Bodhi's bedroom every night, this is something else entirely.

Bodhi doesn't think about Cassian in his bed when he's curled up on the sofa. Not once.

Cassian, now he has a task to carry out, is much like himself again, all unerring focus and quiet satisfaction. He talks to Bodhi about the intricacies of wiring, how the entire _feel_ of a droid can be changed with the tiniest tightening of a bolt, and how sometimes, malfunctions are more beneficial than a manual would have you believe.

“You're good at this,” Bodhi says one evening. Bodhi is sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Cassian is kneeling over Eyes, his hands rifling through the wires in his ventilation unit. His hair is tied back high on his head, and little strands are coming loose at the nape of his neck. Bodhi stares at them while Cassian works. Mainly because Cassian is so engrossed in his work he won't notice, but also because it's much less agonising than looking at Cassian's hands.

“Hmm?” Cassian says, his eyes not leaving the wire he's teasing out of a tiny little gap. He holds his other hand out, and Bodhi's passes him a pair of tweezers.

“You're good at this,” Bodhi repeats. “Fixing up droids. It's clever. I wouldn't have a clue where to start, you know?”

Cassian laughs to himself, still not looking at Bodhi. “I'm not _clever_ ,” he says.

“Well I don't have the faintest idea what you're doing there,” Bodhi say. “So I must be incredibly stupid.”

Cassian frowns. “That is not what I meant,” he mutters. He holds the tweezers between his teeth, and worries at the little cable with his fingers. Bodhi leans over and takes the tweezers out of Cassian's mouth, and he continues. “It's just _here_ , you know? It's just parts. Clever – now that's a medic or something, a scientist-”

“Admit defeat, Andor. You're smart. Really, really smart. You made K-2-”

“I didn't _make_ him,” Cassian says, and he looks away from his work to look at Bodhi then. His face is serious. They haven't talked about K-2 yet. Amongst other things.

Bodhi takes a deep breath. “You did,” he says. “You took an Imperial droid and you made him into a friend. You made him into something good. K-2 wasn't K-2 before you reprogrammed him.”

Cassian looks down at his hands, and Bodhi wants to reach out and grab them. He leans forwards again, reaching out, and Cassian looks back up, his mouth every so slightly op-

“I appear to have lost the feeling in the digits of my left hand,” says Eyes, and Bodhi almost leaps a foot in the air. Cassian turns his head back to the droid, whip crack quick, and clears his throat.

“Run a systems check,” Cassian says, and it's a captain's voice, a nuts and bolts voice.

“I'm going to make tea,” Bodhi says, and promptly flees the room.

-

Bodhi moves the mattress from the spare bedroom into the living room, because the sofa is making his joints creak and he can't sleep in the spare room with Eyes sitting there in various sized pieces. It's not that much better than the sofa, but at least he's not rolling off of the edge and hitting the floor with a thud whenever he has a nightmare.

Ah, those.

They haven't really _ever_ gone away, but Bodhi is more conscious of them now that his thrashing and yelling can wake up Cassian. Cassian doesn't say anything, but Bodhi has awoken to find him standing in the doorway, watching as Bodhi jerks back into consciousness.

Cassian has bad dreams too. Bodhi knows this because some mornings Cassian looks unsettled in his own skin, and the sheets in Bodhi's bed are rumpled and damp with sweat. Tonight though, Bodhi can hear him.

It starts off with Bodhi catching the sound of a rush of breath, almost innocuous enough to be the wind outside. A few seconds later though, it happens again. A tiny gasp, a desperate little noise. Before he even registers himself as upright, Bodhi is at the bedroom door. Cassian hasn't locked it. As he turns the handle, Cassian makes another noise, this one more like a wail.

Fuck the lot of them, Bodhi thinks to himself as he looks at Cassian on the bed. Fuck the Rebellion, fuck the Empire and fuck the entire galaxy for leaving them to live like this. Cassian's face is twisted with misery, and he's crying, Bodhi realises, really crying. Bodhi has never seen Cassian cry, not like this.

He sits on the edge of the bed, and Cassian curls into himself, an instinctive motion even though he's asleep. Bodhi doesn't really know what to do next, and, well, no change there. Cassian sobs again, his whole body shuddering with it, and Bodhi feels like this is something that he shouldn't be intruding on. Then again, Bodhi can't bear to see Cassian unhappy, so he reaches out to shake him awake. Gently at first, and then when Cassian only cries harder in response, more firmly.

Cassian, predictably, wakes gasping and reaching out into the darkness. “Jyn!” he shouts, and Bodhi's heart _aches._

“It's just me,” he says, and Cassian looks at him, his eyes unfocused, his chest heaving. “Bodhi,” he adds, when Cassian continues to look at him blankly, his eyes cast somewhere over, past, through him.

Cassian brings his hands up to his face, and presses his fingers against his damp cheeks as if they're some kind of curiosity. He brings his knees up to his chest, and wraps his arms around his legs. “I woke you,” he says, and his voice is worn and sore sounding. “Sorry.”

“It's alright. You know that I get them too.” Bodhi says. Cassian is silent, his eyes searching in the dark. “I guess when you live on your own, they stop bothering you so much,” Bodhi says after a while. “There's no one to wake up when you, you know.”

Cassian sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cassian doesn't say anything, which given his usual bluntness, Bodhi takes as a reluctant yes. “It's funny, isn't it? We didn't even know them for that long, did we?”

“Three days,” Cassian says. “That's how long I knew Baze and Chirrut for. Three days.”

“We only had a year with Jyn too. It doesn't feel right, somehow. It feels like I've known them for a lifetime, and that they just left the room to go and turn out a light.” Bodhi does that sometimes. Slips into the present tense when he speaks about them. Cassian doesn't pull him up on it, and for that he is grateful.

“I thought that after Scarif, after surviving that, that we'd be able to do anything,” Cassian says. Bodhi doesn't need to ask to know that Cassian is thinking of Jyn's body lying there on the shuttle ramp, the lighting-quick blaster bolt not enough to strike that last laugh from her face. _She wouldn't have even had time to be afraid._

“I wish she was here now,” Bodhi says. “I wish she could have seen that we made it in the end.”

“When we were on that beach,” Cassian says, “I told her that her father would have been proud of her. If it hadn't have been for you, those probably would have been the last words that she'd ever heard.”

“What did she say to you?” Bodhi asks before he can stop himself.

“' _Are you_?'” Cassian laughs. “I never did get to answer it, in the end.”

“Cassian,” Bodhi starts. “Don't do this to yourself. She knew. She knew that she was valued, that she was loved.”

“Yes, but I never _said_ it, did I? I was too hard on her. You too. That's why after she died, I tried so hard with you. I tried to be kind, because I didn't know if we'd live to see another morning.”

Before he knows it, Bodhi is reaching for Cassian's hand. “You always did the right thing,” he says, squeezing Cassian's fingers between his own. “Jyn knew how much you thought of her.” He clears his throat. “Me too.”

“I've just spent years wishing that I'd said more when I had the chance.”

Suddenly, Bodhi is back in his little kitchen in the flat on Coruscant, turning over every conversation he'd had with their crew over and over in his head. “I know how you feel,” he says. “I've spent most of my time since the end of the war thinking exactly the same thing.”

Cassian shifts over a little, and it's an invitation. Cassian isn't a man of many words, but of minute cues. Bodhi sits next to him, back against the headboard. After a week of the living room floor, even sitting bolt upright in a bed feels like heaven.

“I am sorry for waking you,” Cassian says. “Really.” He sounds a little embarrassed. “I think it's sleeping somewhere new, or-”

“It's fine,” Bodhi says. “You can't help it, so don't apologise.”

Cassian leans against him. “Remember when we'd stay up for hours on missions? K-2 would be yelling at us to go to sleep, and you'd be laughing so hard I thought you'd pass out.”

“And then you'd start laughing, and he'd get even more wound up.”

Cassian shakes a little, that strange jerky motion that he favours rather than committing to a particular emotion. “I never was good at following his orders. Did you know that the Rebellion let me keep him because they thought that a droid might be a voice of reason?”

Bodhi snorts. “Well, that didn't quite go to plan, did it?”

They sit like that for a while, trading stories. Bodhi feels his limbs grow heavy, then his eyes. He sinks down into the bed, until he's on his back, his head tilted up at an angle that's making his neck protest.

“Ugh. I'm going to get up,” he says, and starts to shift into an upright position.

“Sleep here,” says Cassian. “The bed's big enough.” When Bodhi doesn't say anything and goes stock still instead, he rolls his eyes. “We shared a sleeping bag on Hoth. This is infinitely less uncomfortable.”

“Fine,” sighs Bodhi, like being persuaded to sleep in his own bed in his own home is a struggle that he's often losing. “I'll probably get up early anyway.” He pulls the duvet over him, turning his back to Cassian. It should feel weird, given Bodhi's feelings. It doesn't though. Cassian's proximity is a familiar, comforting thing. The mattress on the living room floor is a far worse place to dwell on things.

He wakes with Cassian's hand at his hip, his breath on the back of Bodhi's neck. Bodhi should get up, but he likes this, the warmth, the almost too-closeness of Cassian pressed up against him. Cassian isn't a naturally tactile person, so Bodhi lays there and listens to him breathing. It's a little too warm under the covers, which Bodhi realises that Cassian must have drawn over them both, but he ignores it. It's nice. To be warm. To be held, however loosely that word can be defined.

When he wakes again a few hours later, Cassian is sprawled on his back, while Bodhi is still curled in the same half moon shape he fell asleep in. It's cooler now that Cassian has moved away. Bodhi wonders if he'd done so intentionally. The light is pouring in through the window, and Bodhi realises that it must be mid-morning, surely. He sits up, gingerly, as not to wake Cassian. He sleeps as deeply as you'd expect a spy to – on a knife edge. Fortunately, Bodhi has years of sharing rooms with Cassian to draw experience from. He moves quickly, quietly, out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

He's made two mugs of tea when Cassian emerges. Bodhi hears the pat-pat of his bare feet in the hallway, the creak of the kitchen door as he pushes it open. He meets Cassian's gaze, and it's a little sheepish.

“Morning,” he says, and the word is innocuous enough, yes. The way it's said though, all sleep-soft and warm, well. That is something else entirely.

_Bodhi, Bodhi, come on. Be brave. You've done it before._

“I made tea,” he says instead, and his stomach clenches.

Cassian smiles. “You always were the best at making it.” His hair is loose, and he keeps tucking it behind his ears before a few seconds later, it comes free again.

“Old Jedhan schooboy secrets,” he says. “As long as you know how to make a good cup of tea and you know how to hotwire a ship, you'll go far.”

“That's all they taught you at school?”

“Well, that and other things. I can still recite thirteen poems from memory, I can tell you how to brew an antidote for a desert-snake bite and I can _definitely_ tell you how to cheat at cards. That last one I learned in the playground.”

“I never really bothered with school,” Cassian says.

“Too busy throwing rocks at Stormtroopers?”

“Hah! Something like that.” Bodhi passes him the mug, and Cassian's fingers brush against his. Cassian looks down at their hands for a moment, and then he's bringing the mug to his mouth. He looks at Bodhi through the steam that rises from it. “I don't really know much, you know. Droids aside.”

“Don't forget the spying,” Bodhi says, leaning back against the counter.

“Right!” Cassian says, hitting himself on the forehead with the ball of his hand. “I did wonder what I'd been doing for the past few years.”

Bodhi laughs, and Cassian smiles with his mouth pressed to the rim of the mug. “You're funny,” Bodhi says. “When you've got time to be.”

“Maybe it's the company.” Cassian says.

Bodhi just looks at him, and for a moment he's certain that this is it, the moment where he just _asks_ Cassian. “Maybe,” he says instead, and for the second time in minutes, he takes the coward's way out.

Cassian drinks his tea in silence. When he puts the empty mug in the sink, he reaches out and brushes the back of his hand against Bodhi's forearm. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“For what?” Bodhi asks. Cassian's hand is warm. It feels like it could be branding Bodhi's flesh.

“For being you,” he says. “For bringing me here. For sitting up with me last night. For being a good-” and here he pauses, chooses his words with the careful consideration of a man who has often wrestled with towering odds. “Person,” he finishes. “A better person than I could ever hope to be.”

When Cassian moves his hand away from Bodhi's arm, it seems improbable that his words aren't there, seared onto Bodhi's skin.


	3. Chapter 3

They establish a kind of normality between them, somehow. Bodhi goes to work, and sometimes Cassian comes with him too. Other times he's elbow deep in circuitry, his mind somewhere else entirely. Bodhi knows that it helps, to have something to focus on, an objective. Cassian has never done well just living, as sad as that is. He needs to have something to occupy his mind, a goal to drive towards.

Fixing up a droid is much less perilous than chasing Imperial insurgents across the galaxy, so Bodhi doesn't care that his apartment is littered with spare parts, or that Cassian appears when he is trying to read a book, urging him to come and look at what he's just done. Bodhi pretends that he does it under sufferance, sometimes. Both he and Cassian know that there's none of that in it.

One afternoon, three months after Cassian first set foot in his home, Bodhi lets himself in to find Eyes standing in the kitchen, wielding a particularity large knife. Before he has time to be alarmed, he hears Cassian's voice, and then he steps in front of Eyes, his back to Bodhi. “Bring it down, just like that. Not as much pressure as last time. How does that feel?”

A thud, and then another. “Good,” says Eyes. “It has been some time since it was working properly, much longer since it had the degree of dexterity to chop vegetables.”

“Bodhi didn't want you to help with the cooking then, huh?” says Cassian, and Bodhi can tell just from the sound of his voice that he's smiling.

“I do not think that it concerned him that I could not.”

“Hmm,” says Cassian, and Bodhi hears the creak of plating being prised open. “Okay, now try that again. Rate the ease of the action out of ten.”

“Eight-point-two,” says Eyes. “I would like to point out that I am not a droid that is designed to assist with culinary tasks.”

“No, but you can if you want to. Organics don't often turn out how they're supposed to, and that's fine. Why should you be limited to just one thing?”

“A strange, but not nonsensical observation.”

Cassian laughs. “That's not the first time a droid has said something like that to me. You're a little more polite though.”

“Ah, yes. Your friend.”

“Yeah,” says Cassian. “My friend.”

After that, Cassian is silent as he works. Eyes looks over at Bodhi, and Bodhi brings a finger to his mouth. He's loath to disturb Cassian right now, when he's so focused. So open too, judging by the conversation that he and Eyes are having. He still has a hand on the door handle, and he steps backwards again, so that he's standing just outside the threshold. Enough so that if Cassian does turn around and see him, Bodhi could be stepping into the room at that exact moment. Not eavesdropping like a naughty child.

“Right,” says Cassian. “I think that's it. Run a systems check, just in case.”

Eyes starts whirring softly, and as he does, he speaks. “Thank you,” he says. “Organics don't often show my kind such care.”

“That's one thing I've never been able to understand,” says Cassian. “But you're welcome. It's been a while since I've worked on a droid as complex as you. I was worried I might have forgotten how it all works.”

“I will let you know if my new arm suddenly detaches,” says Eyes. “But I doubt that it will. Bodhi told me that you're the best. A verbatim quote.”

 _Thanks for that,_ Bodhi thinks to himself.

“He said that, did he?” says Cassian.

“Yes,” Eyes says. “What reason would I have to lie about that?”

“Okay, okay! I believe you,” Cassian says, laughing.

“Bodhi has great faith in you,” Eyes says. Droids don't really sound soft or caring by nature, but Eyes lowers the volume of his voice and relaxes his posture to indicate that he's being gentle. “His capacity for kindness cannot be underestimated.”

Bodhi feels blood rush to his face, and he shakes his head. This is something that he's definitely not meant to be listening to, and he goes to shut the door as quietly as he can. Cassian's voice stops him though. “You're right,” Cassian says. “It's like what you said a while ago. That he didn't mind that there were certain things that you couldn't do.”

“I do not think that Bodhi sees any fault in broken things,” says Eyes, and his optics are fixed on Cassian. Ah, the wisdom of droids.

Cassian doesn't say anything, just goes back to arranging the tools he's laid out on the table. This, Bodhi decides, is the time to make an entrance, and cut Eyes off before he can say anything else. He rattles the door handle with more force than would ever be necessary, pretending that his keys are jammed. “Hello?” he calls. Eyes stares at him.

“Hey!” says Cassian. He appears in the kitchen doorway. “I was just finishing Eyes's arm. Come and see.”

Bodhi pulls his keys out of the lock in mock struggle, and Eyes's optics flicker in a way that strongly resembles an eye roll. Bodhi ignores him and walks into the kitchen.

“Eyes,” Cassian says, and he's so _pleased._ “Chop.” Eyes proceeds to slice a marrow at an alarming speed, so fast that the knife is a blur in his hand. Cassian looks at Bodhi, a small smile on his face. “How about that?” he says.

 _You're incredible,_ Bodhi wants to say. _You're so brilliant and clever and you don't even realise it._ “Not bad,” he says instead, and squeezes Cassian's shoulder. “He's in better shape than when I bought him now.”

“I was destined for the scrapheap,” Eyes says mournfully. “Luckily, Bodhi wasn't looking for something shiny and new.”

“Where's the fun in that?” Bodhi says, and he feels Cassian's gaze on his face. “So!” he says, clapping his hands together. “Does this mean that I'm not making dinner for a change?”

It's edible. Just about.

-

Eyes being fixed means that the spare room is free again. Cassian's ribs are healed now too. There's no reason for them to share Bodhi's bed, none at all. Not that there ever was in the first place really. Night time always finds Cassian laying in Bodhi's bed though, and they'll watch a holoshow together, or just talk into the early hours. Bodhi thinks that it's probably got something to do with them both being alone for so long. It was always going to be hard to go back to sleeping on their own. So they didn't.

Fine. Nothing wrong with that. They've bunked together (and squeezed into that sleeping bag on Hoth) plenty of times. It's not a problem.

It might be a problem.

Cassian is not a tactile person when he's awake, bar moments of extreme emotional distress. When he's asleep though, well. Bodhi wakes up with Cassian's face pressed to his neck, or his leg slung over Bodhi's hips, or his hand fisted in the front of Bodhi's sleep shirt. Cassian says it's because Bodhi radiates incredible amounts of heat, and being someone who is _always_ cold, it's nice.

By now, Bodhi is almost certain that Cassian feels the same way as he does. He had thought that about Galen though, and look how that had panned out. Galen was never like this though, never this affectionate, or easy to be around. When he was following Galen around like a lovesick teenager, it was always a bit of a game. How would Bodhi impress him next? With Cassian, there's none of that.

So, here they are. Still not talking. Well, they're talking, but not _talking._ It's fear that's holding Bodhi back. He likes this, whatever they've fallen into, a tentative affection. He's worried that if he tries to talk about it, or give it a name, he'll break the spell. Which is ridiculous, he knows.

Tomorrow, he thinks, as Cassian rolls over to pull him close. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

-

Erisi comes knocking at Bodhi's door one evening with a bottle of wine and a job for Cassian. She discloses these facts in that exact order, only she refers to Cassian as 'your friend' accompanied by a look that clearly implies _please say that you've talked_.

“Cassian!” Bodhi calls, and pointedly ignores the way Erisi is trying to glare a hole into the side of his skull. “Erisi's here. She has alcohol and something to tell you.”

“That sounds ominous,” Cassian says as he makes his way into the hallway. “Hello,” he says to Erisi. “Should I be sitting down for this?”

She laughs. “Hardly. Mal Thashin, the guy that runs the droid modding business in town – don't worry, Bodhi knows who I mean, don't you?” She doesn't wait for Bodhi to respond. “He's going to be off-world a lot over the next few months, and the other day he was asking me who fixed up Eyes. 'Don't you know?!' I told him. 'That was Bodhi's friend.' So now, thanks to me, you have a job.” She looks down at the bottle in her hand. “You should have bought this for me, actually.”

Cassian just looks at her, lost for words. Bodhi gently pries the bottle from her grip. “You better come in,” he says. “Cassian short-circuits if anyone does anything nice for him.”

Over the next hour, the facts become a little clearer. Mal Thashin is leaving to find himself, which makes Bodhi choke on his wine. He'll be dropping in from time to time, but he needs someone to take over the bulk of his jobs while he's not there. Apparently, he'd never seen a droid so improved as Eyes, and has invited Cassian, via Erisi and her bottle of wine, to come and spend an afternoon with him at the workshop.

“So,” she says, glass of wine tilted at a precarious angle. “What shall I say?”

Cassian looks at Bodhi, who just smiles. “Alright,” he says after a moment. I'll go to see him tomorrow.”

“In that case,” Erisi says, “I'll give you his comm number. Just to warn you, he does like to send pictures of his d-”

“And that's enough wine for tonight,” Bodhi says. “You,” he says, pointing at Erisi, “can take the sofa.”

“Where's _he_ sleeping,” she says, inclining her head towards Cassian.

“The spare room!” both he and Cassian say in unison.

Erisi raises her eyebrows. “Alright boss,” she says. “Whatever you say. Hey, can I have a blanket?”

Later that night, Bodhi lies in bed and chases sleep that stubbornly refuses to come. He's well aware of what's causing it – Cassian is across the hall and not here next to Bodhi.

This, if he is to tell the story to someone many years later, is what would be referred to as the tipping point. He tiptoes to the spare room, where he finds Cassian sitting bolt upright in bed. “I couldn't sleep,” he says.

Cassian looks up, and that searching stare is focused entirely on him. “Neither could I,” he breathes.

“I don't think I can fall asleep without you now,” says Bodhi, and it feels like relief, it feels like finally letting himself cry all those months back, it feels like taking a great lungful of clean air after being held underwater.

“Bodhi,” Cassian says, and Bodhi's never heard his name said like that before. Like it's something sweet, something to be savoured and turned over on Cassian's tongue again and again. “Come here. It's cold, and-”

“Alright,” says Bodhi, and he pulls back the covers. Cassian is wearing boxers and a shirt that's so worn it's translucent. The hairs on his legs are standing on end as Bodhi's own press up against them. The bed is not big, and there's not even an inch between them. “Alright, I've got you.”

“We pick the worst moments, don't we?” says Cassian, and his hands are pushing up underneath Bodhi's shirt. Tentatively, carefully, like everything else he does. Bodhi's breath catches, and all he can do is nod. “Is it bad that I have no idea what I want to say to you?”

“No,” says Bodhi. “I think we're pretty good at not talking when we really should be.” Cassian laughs at that, and he presses his face to Bodhi's neck. Bodhi brings his hand to Cassian's hair, and runs his fingers through it. Cassian makes a hot little sound at that, a breathless _uh-uh_ that makes Bodhi move even closer, if that's possible. They're pressed together from toe to torso, and stars, this is so different to the nights that they've shared in Bodhi's bed.

“”I'm terrified-” Cassian begins, and Bodhi starts to move away before Cassian's hand is at his hip, holding him in place. “- that your friend is going to walk in any minute now.”

“You and me both,” says Bodhi, and he relaxes again. There should be an urgency to this, they should be exchanging feverish confessions. Bodhi is hard, and Cassian is too, he can feel it pressing against his thigh. He doesn't move though, doesn't hook a leg over Cassian's hip and grind against him. He wants to, but there's no rush – and that is such a blessed, unbelievable thought it makes Bodhi's heart sing. “I think,” he says, “we should wait until tomorrow to- well. You know.”

“You're trying to kill me,” says Cassian. He breathes deeply, and Bodhi can feel the damp warmth of it at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. He shudders, and grips Cassian's shoulder. “Does that mean that I can't kiss you either?”

Bodhi is pretty sure that he's going to faint, and the noise he makes is incredibly embarrassing. “Don't say that,” he whispers. “Oh my _stars_ , you'll kill me in turn.”

“That,” Cassian says lowly, “is not an answer.”

Bodhi thinks of the person who loves him sleeping on his sofa, someone who would very much like to see him and Cassian work things out. He has no desire for her to hear, or worse, see any of this. He'll tell her everything in good time. Cassian sets off something greedy in him, something possessive. He desires him beyond anything else, and he doesn't want anyone to know just how much he does. He doesn't want anyone to catch a look of Cassian's that's meant for him, or hear a sound that's just for the two of them to share. After all the years he's spent alone, he wants something that's just for him.

“No,” he says. “You can't. Because I want to kiss you and I don't want to have to keep quiet.” It's incredible, being able to say something like that. If someone asked him right now why he'd waited so long, he'd have no answer for them. He has no memory of fear, or uncertainty. Cassian wanting him is a sure, sweet thing. Inevitable, irrevocable. As constant as the ebb of the tide.

“Please,” says Cassian, “stop talking right now. Or I'm going to have to call your friend a grav-cab.”

“That would be _rude_ ,” Bodhi says, but there's no bite to it. “She's got you a job. Which you will be brilliant at.”

“Hmmm,” is all that Cassian musters for a reply on that one. “We'll see.”

“No,” Bodhi says, and he shifts so that he and Cassian are facing each other. “You will be. You can do anything.”

“And if that anything is a small life, a life in which I can just be me? Not a hero, not a spy, but just me?” Bodhi hears what Cassian doesn't say. _The war made me more, and now I'm settling for less._ Round and round until it's _the war made me lesser, and now I want to be more._ It's not wrong to want a small life, a kind life. When you've changed the course of the galaxy though, that's hard to tell yourself.

Bodhi holds Cassian's hand under the covers. “Then that's fine. Because I'll be there.”

-

The boats bob up and down in the harbour, little brightly coloured things that are at odds with the great, gleaming ships that swoop in low across the sky. Bodhi watches them come and go, and thinks of how Cassian had been this morning. Nervous, his shoulders a hard, tense line, a smile that quickly turned rictus. Bodhi had wanted to kiss him, but Erisi was there and that strange, new possessive urge had flared up in him again. _Later,_ he'd tried to communicate with his eyes alone, and Cassian's grip on his mug had turned white knuckle tight.

“Hey,” a voice says from his left, and Bodhi turns to see Cassian standing there. It'd hard to believe that he's really here sometimes, but now, with his hair coming loose from its tie and catching in the breeze, his cheeks flushed a little from the cold, he's part of the landscape. Bodhi wonders if it feels like home for him yet.

“Funny,” he says. “I was just thinking about you.”

Cassian puts his hands in his pockets and tilts his head to the side. “Yeah?” he says, and it's hopeful.

“Well, I've been thinking about you all day,” says Bodhi.

Cassian smiles. “Such a worrier.”

 _I was thinking about how your body feels against mine, how I want to learn its tricks and quirks,_ Bodhi thinks. He has been worried too though. Worried about Cassian not liking the job, being so appalled by the entire concept of working and putting down roots here that he sets off to steal a ship without even saying goodbye. “I can't turn it off, I'm afraid,” he says. “Which means that you're going to have to tell me everything.”

“I bore you when I talk about droids,” Cassian says.

“I think I could listen to you talk about anything,” Bodhi says, and stars, isn't that the honest truth.

“I'm sure we'll disprove that soon enough,” Cassian says, but he's smiling. “Come on. Buy me some caf and I'll tell you everything.”

Cassian's right. Droids are incredibly boring when you break them down into parts. Give Bodhi the sharp thrill of a ship's controls under his hands any day, or the satisfaction of a rigged game of cards finally tilting in his favour. Cassian is lit up like a kyber mine right now though, a secret, bright precious thing at the heart of him thrumming and burning. Happiness, if Bodhi is to put it less poetically.

“Have you been listening to anything I've just said?” says Cassian, and Bodhi is bought back to the harbourside. A gull cries overhead, and the low hum of a ship departing in the distance accompanies the sound of a boat's bell.

“...yes?” says Bodhi.

“Right,” says Cassian, laughing now. “Of course you did. Fine. Let's skip the caf and go back to yours.”

As they fall into step with each other, Bodhi clears his throat. “You know, it's your place too now. Technically.” At Cassian's raised eyebrow he continues. “Well, now that you have a job you can pay your way.”

Cassian looks at him carefully, as if Bodhi's speaking in some kind of code that he needs to decipher before he figures out how to proceed. “Alright,” he says after a moment. “Let's go back to ours then.”

“Home,” says Bodhi. The word feels warm. It feels lucky and good.

When they step through the front door, Bodhi becomes acutely aware that they're alone. The silence is overwhelming at first, and Cassian's eyes pan over him like, well, like Bodhi's never been looked at before. His hand twitches involuntarily on the door handle, wanting to pull Cassian close by the collar of his shirt.

“I think,” Cassian says, and all the lightness of their earlier conversation is gone, replaced with purpose, a purpose that's weighty, with a set course. Bodhi doesn't realise that he's holding his breath until Cassian continues. “I think that we should-”

“-finish that bottle,” finishes Bodhi, and they're laughing then, a slow easy thing. “Go and get changed,” Bodhi says. “I'll try and find something.”

He does find something – an unidentifiable bottle of orange liquid that smells sweet and oh, really fucking strong. It's either that or some Corellian rum and, well, Bodhi isn't a twelve year old getting drunk for the first time.

“Oh,” says Cassian when Bodhi passes him the bottle. “I didn't realise that we were cleaning engines tonight.”

“It's better than the stuff we drank in the war,” says Bodhi. “If you don't want any, get a glass and go to the tap.”

Cassian uncorks the bottle and takes a swig. Bodhi can't stop staring at the sharp line of his jaw. Cassian coughs, and holds the bottle out for Bodhi to take. “Disgusting,” he says. “It tastes like medicine.”

Cassian is right, and he laughs and laughs as Bodhi splutters. “Alright, alright,” Bodhi concedes. “There's some rum in the cupboard. Corellian.”

“Apt,” says Cassian. “Seeing as it's where we met again.”

The rum does go down easier than the hell liquor. A little too easy in fact. Soon, Cassian is laying down on the sofa, his feet propped up on one of the arms. Bodhi sits on the floor opposite him, his back pressed against the armchair. Cassian is telling him about his first kiss, a disastrous encounter with a girl called Hira that ended up with Cassian having to hide on a roof from her three brothers.

“ _Please_ don't say that that was where you got your taste for espionage,” Bodhi says, a little breathless from the rum and laughing alike. “Scaling drainpipes to escape enraged older brothers.”

“Oh, absolutely,” says Cassian, and he eases himself up from the sofa to come and join Bodhi on the floor. “Never mind that I'd been spying for about two years before I even laid eyes on her.”

“Do not make me do the maths,” Bodhi says. “Not my strong point.”

“Good,” says Cassian. “Because I'd be very embarrassed.” He takes a sip from the bottle, and passes it back to Bodhi when he's done. Their fingers touch as Bodhi takes it, and Cassian keeps his eyes on Bodhi's fingers as he drinks. “What about you?” Cassian asks.

“What about _what_?” Bodhi replies.

“Your first kiss.”

“Oh _Force_ ,” Bodhi groans. “His name was Tyrral. His father had a market stall, selling these little orange berries that grew on trees in the temple grounds. Anyway, when we kissed, all I could smell was that fruit, and I could _taste_ it too.”

“Poor Tyrral,” says Cassian, pulling a face.

“I didn't say it was bad,” Bodhi says, and he's bringing the bottle to his mouth again.

“Oh,” says Cassian. “Right.” A moment passes. “Was he the best?”

“No,” says Bodhi. He looks at Cassian, catalogues his easy posture, the way his shirt rides up and bares an inch of his stomach for Bodhi's eyes only. It's one of his own shirts, Bodhi realises – and that makes him feel a little heady.

“Who was?” Cassian asks. He reaches over to take the bottle from Bodhi, and he doesn't move back afterwards. He doesn't drink, just runs his thumbs along the edge of the rim. Bodhi's eyes must be comically wide at this point.

“No one stands out really,” he says, trying to keep his voice level. “Maybe I'm still waiting for someone to impress me.”

Cassian does drink then – the long, steady kind of swig that he'd take the night before they headed off on a mission. “Is that so?” he says when he stops drinking. “Any idea where you're going to find them?”

“Maybe,” Bodhi says, playing along. “You're nosy,” he says. “I never asked you who your best kiss was.” He shifts, and Cassian leans forward so that he is kneeling in front of Bodhi's slightly splayed legs. “You're after all my secrets.”

“I'm a spy,” Cassian says. “I trade in secrets.”

“Give me one then,” says Bodhi, and brings a hand to Cassian's hair, brushing it back behind his ear. No going back now.

“I loved you then, and I love you still.” Oh. _Oh._ To hear it, finally, it's almost too much. Bodhi pulls him closer, and their noses bump against each other. Then they're angling their heads, perfectly aligned. “Your turn,” Cassian says, and every hair on Bodhi's body stands up on end at the way Cassian's eyes dart down to his lips.

“I want to kiss you,” Bodhi says. “I have done for a ridiculously long time, but never more than right now.” Cassian's mouth curves up at the edges, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I've another secret for you,” Bodhi says, emboldened by the way Cassian shifts impossibly closer.

“Yeah?” Cassian says. “And what is it?”

“A secret for a secret,” Bodhi says. “Not until you give me another one.”

“I could kiss you instead,” Cassian says. His breath is mingling with Bodhi's own now, confessions intertwined. “Seeing as you've been waiting a long time.”

“Please,” Bodhi says.

Cassian has always been a man of his word. He leans forward, as if there could be any more space left between them, and just like that, he's doing what he promised. Bodhi's world narrows sharply to a single pinpoint of focus, to the pulse in Cassian's neck beneath his fingers. He makes a noise against Cassian's mouth, a yes and a please and a finally all at once.

Bodhi knows some things with absolute certainty. He is thirty-six years old. Cassian Andor's hair is soft beneath his fingers, and his mouth against Bodhi's own is even softer. The sun is setting outside. Cassian's hand is pushing his shirt up, and his palm is hot against Bodhi's stomach. Every moment in Bodhi's life has been leading up to this one, every decision he's ever made, even though he didn't know it at the time, has landed him here.

Cassian pulls away, and Bodhi follows him before Cassian's hands are on his shoulders, holding him where he is. “What's your other secret then?” he asks.

“I love you,” Bodhi says. “Just like you love me.”

“What are the chances,” Cassian breathes, and then his mouth is back against Bodhi's. He's leaning over him now, his legs bracketing Bodhi's own, and part of Bodhi wants to pull Cassian down into his lap and rut until they're coming like giddy teenagers. Cassian makes a noise against his mouth, a pleased little hum, and Bodhi drinks it like honey fresh from the hive. This is good. Just this.

“I've wanted this for so long,” he whispers when Cassian pulls back. “I've been so lonely.” He runs his hands along Cassian's thighs, the firm muscle of them, the bone and beating pulse of his flesh. “I can hardly believe that you're real. That you're really here.”

“It's hard to believe any of it really,” Cassian says, and he brings his hand to Bodhi's face, cradling his jaw. “All that we've lived through.”

“Was it worth it?” Bodhi asks.

“Who knows,” Cassian murmurs. “I haven't really known anything good since.” The way he looks at Bodhi says that maybe now he's found it. His other hand grips Bodhi's on the floor, and he rests their foreheads together.

The clock on the wall ticks, and ticks, and ticks. Neither of them move to get up, aching backs and sore knees be damned. The moment stretches on, suspended in amber, and Bodhi's breathing slows to match Cassian's own.

-

Bodhi doesn't like spending time away from Cassian, now that he's his. He's very, very aware of all the problems that come with co-dependency, he's read plenty of books while trying to make sense of the muddle at the middle of his own mind. Cassian is the same though, always reaching out to touch him, to press a kiss to his neck, to pull him close when he feels that Bodhi is too far away – even if that's by just an inch.

It's just like before. During the war. Living in such close proximity that in the end you pick up each other's habits, reach for a jumper to pull on when you get out bed without checking that it's yours first, make two cups of caf without thinking.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's called being together, being happy. Some easy and familiar and kind. Maybe it's always been like this, but it was hidden beneath barely-lit raids and coded transmissions and waiting to die for the cause. Nothing cloying, or overbearing, or ruinous.

Bodhi hasn't had time to be with someone, not properly. He looks at the waves outside of the window, rolling and crashing, rolling and crashing. He's never swum in the sea that he can see from his living room window either. There's time to learn yet. There's always time to make yourself new.

“You should grow your hair again,” Cassian says one afternoon. They're in the bathroom, Cassian shaving at the sink and Bodhi perched on the edge of the tub.

“And you should cut yours,” Bodhi shoots back. Cassian laughs at that, and Bodhi had almost forgotten how lovely a sight that was, during those years without him.

Cassian looks back at his reflection. He fiddles with the grey hairs at his temples as he ties it up. “I think I'll have to dye mine,” he says. Bodhi pulls a face, and Cassian catches it in the mirror. “No?”

“Definitely not. It looks good.”

Cassian turns round, and raises an eyebrow. “I look old,” he says.

“Well, it's proof that we made it, isn't it?” Bodhi says. He's only wearing his boxers, and the burns he bought back with him from Scarif, the ones a skin graft couldn't quite mend, stand out in the morning light. He used to think that they made him look ruined. Now, Cassian leans over to run the back of his hand along his thigh, over the mottled skin, and Bodhi feels pride bloom in his chest. _Yeah, we made it._

“I suppose so,” says Cassian. “None of us really expected to get old. To go grey, To settle down.”

“Well, firstly, you're not _old._ Not yet. I'm only a year younger than you, and accepting that you're old means that I am too. So none of that.” Cassian's hand is still moving in circles on his leg, and Bodhi is acutely aware that they're within sprinting distance of the bed – in fact he can see it through the open door.

“I have to get to work,” Cassian says. “Stop making moon eyes at the bedroom.”

“I am _not maki-_ ” Bodhi starts to say, but then Cassian is cutting that sentence off with a kiss. The novelty of kissing Bodhi when and wherever he likes is one that he's not growing tired of just yet, it seems.

“Have you ever done this before?” Bodhi asks Cassian as he's pulling on his jacket.

“Done what?”

“This. Being with someone. Properly.”

“No. I thought I might, with Jyn, but then. Well.” He clears his throat and looks at Bodhi, his brow furrowed. “”Have you?”

Bodhi thinks of Galen, his words, his hands, his promises that were just built on shifting sands. “No,” he says. “Was a bit short on time, really.”

“That's what we have now,” Cassian says. He reaches over to ruffle Bodhi's hair, and laughs when Bodhi tries to push him away. “Don't worry so much. Just let it happen.”

Considering that his whole life has been made up of seemingly innocuous events that have then wildly escalated out of control, that's not a particularly easy thing for him to do. He nods though, and kisses Cassian – chastely this time.

-

Life can be as settled and as calm as possible, but at night, when you're trapped inside your own mind, that's when it can get a little bit more trying. Bodhi's nightmares come in clusters. He'll go weeks without a single one, and then there will be one intrusive thought that works its way into his brain as he falls asleep, and he's off again. Night after night, each dream more frightening and nonsensical than the last.

Tonight, he's been dreaming of Jyn and Galen, their faces blurred into one, beyond recognition. Galen is screaming at him for not saving Jyn, and Jyn is screaming at him for not saving Galen. Guilt, guilt, guilt. It's overwhelming. When he wakes, his body doesn't catch up with his brain straight away and he's frozen, rooted to the mattress. He looks up at the ceiling, and he swears that it's pressing down on him, further and further down into the mattress until it swallows him whole.

He doesn't even realise that he's moving again until Cassian's trying to stop him from kicking him off the bed. He's howling, no, screaming. Jyn's name, Galen's name – who knows? It feels good, like something bad is being ripped out of him. So he shouts and shouts until he's being held against Cassian's chest.

“Hey,” Cassian says, and his voice sounds far away. “You're alright. I've got you. I'm here.”

“I need to get up,” Bodhi says. His throat is dry and sore from all the shouting, and he's sticky with sweat.

“Okay,” says Cassian. “What do you need?”

“Can we-” and he shudders then, a full body tremor that has Cassian holding him even tighter. “Can we go outside?” He takes a breath, and manages to fill his lungs properly this time. “To the beach.”

“The beach?” says Cassian. “It's,” and he turns slightly to look at the clock, “four in the morning.”

“I just want some air,” Bodhi says. “Look, you don't have to come.”

“I didn't say that I wouldn't,” Cassian replies. His voice is sleep-soft but he's alert, ready to move at the first asking. Just like when they'd be woken by an unsmiling Intelligence operative and told that they had ten minutes before they needed to leave on a mission. Bodhi's room feels like his quarters on Hoth all of a sudden – dark and spartan and full of thin, useless air.

“Let's go,” he says. “I want to go.”

Cassian squeezes his hand under the duvet.

The wind had been whipping the sea up into a frenzy just a few hours ago, but now the water is flat and glassy. They sit a way back from the water's edge, up against a huge boulder. Bodhi takes a deep breath, and feels the tension in him ebb a little. “I come here a lot,” he says to Cassian. “It's so quiet.”

“Ah, so this is where you disappear to.”

“It's nice. When I was a kid, I always used to dream about living by the sea.” He looks towards the horizon, where the sun's light is just starting to bloom. “Didn't quite imagine I'd come running here every time I had a bad dream though. Thought I might have grown out of that by now.”

“You were dreaming about Jyn,” Cassian says carefully. “And her father.”

“Yes,” Bodhi says, because nothing good would come of denying it. “They go hand in hand sometimes, in my dreams. I can barely tell them apart.”

“You loved him,” Cassian says flatly. “Erso. Didn't you?”

Bodhi looks down at the sand rather than meet Cassian's gaze. “Yes,” he says. “I did. Well, I thought that I did.” He stops, closes his eyes. Cassian doesn't say anything, so after a moment, Bodhi continues. “I thought he cared about me, you see. I thought that he had feelings for me too. He used to tell me that I was special, and that it _had_ to be me that took the message to Saw.”

His eyes are stinging, and he _curses_ Galen Erso, curses him for still making him feel like a fool eleven years later. The words are coming out of him now, unbidden, unstoppable. “He didn't care about me though, not really. He knew that I was lonely and vulnerable and just about reckless enough to be convinced. So he lied to me. Told me that it would be easy, all I had to do was just deliver the message, and that he'd see me again soon enough. And I was stupid enough to believe him, wasn't I? I thought that he loved me, and if I did this one little thing for him, that he'd take care of me. I'd been alone for so long Cassian. I would have died for someone if they'd showed me the tiniest ounce of kindness.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. Cassian moves towards him minutely, and Bodhi wants nothing more than to just lean against him, just be close to him. His hands are shaking, and he wants to stop talking, but he doesn't think he can now. It's pointless anyway, when he's already said so much. He reaches for one of the pebbles by his feet and turns it over in his palm, again and again.

“Thing is, Galen couldn't have cared less if I lived or died. I could have pressed that message into Saw Gerrera's hands and been rewarded with a blaster bolt to the head, and it would have made no difference to him. It took me so long to realise that he didn't care about me, and when he did, hah! I didn't even resent him then. Which is ridiculous, I know. After that, I didn't think that anyone could love me. I thought that someone would only value me if it furthered their own cause. So I tried to make myself hard, I let people use me. I pushed you away, and stars, I regret that now. You cared about me, and I didn't see it, didn't let myself. Because I thought that I was expendable. I have wasted so many years of my life, and it makes me so fucking angry I could scream.”

For a minute, Bodhi is met with silence. Even the sea seems to cease making a noise. Then Cassian speaks, but does so looking out to sea. “You know, just because someone's a hero doesn't mean that they're a good person. Erso, yeah, he did what he did. Saved the day in the end. But that doesn't mean that the way he treated you was right.”

“I was _stupid._ ” Bodhi says. “To fall for any of it.”

“Yeah, well, we all were. To fall for any of it. But we did, and it's led us here.” He looks at Bodhi then, and he smiles. “That's not so bad now, is it?”

“I love you,” Bodhi says. “I just wish that we'd had more time.”

“I love you too,” says Cassian. The sun is rising in earnest now, and his face is bathed in that fragile first light of the morning. His sharp chin, his heavy-lidded eyes, that mouth that lends itself just as well to kissing as it does to smiling these days. “I'm glad that we found each other again. I'm glad that I ended up here.” He looks out towards the sea again, and Bodhi follows his gaze. He breathes in and out, slowly and carefully. The strangeness of unloading something that he'd carried around for so long eases with each breath, and soon, he feels relieved. “We should go swimming together,” Cassian says suddenly, breaking the silence.

“Never tried it,” says Bodhi. The waves lap at the shore as if they're inviting him in.

“Oh,” says Cassian. “I used to all the time when I was a boy.”

“Maybe you can teach me,” Bodhi says, and for a moment he pictures it. Cassian's arms around his waist in the water, guiding him – and then later, Bodhi's legs hooked around him as Cassian presses him up against the rocks.

“Yeah,” says Cassian, and his voice is a sunrise in itself. “I think I will.”

-

The months pass quickly, and summer arrives just as Cassian turns thirty-eight. Bodhi's birthday isn't far behind, and as Cassian sleeps peacefully by his side, Bodhi thinks that you couldn't pay him to be twenty-five again.

“What do you want for your birthday?” Cassian asks him a few days before it. They're sitting on the sofa, Cassian's legs propped up on Bodhi's lap.

Bodhi's been out in the sun all day, and the heat that lingers just under his skin has him feeling languid and easy. So when he looks at Cassian and says “I'd like to take you to bed,” it doesn't feel strange to say it. It feels like he's thrumming with heat, all over his body and deep within.

Cassian looks at him, that cool, calm captain's stare. “Oh?” he says. “Is that all?”

“Yeah,” Bodhi says. “That's all.”

Cassian laughs, and it's so quiet that it barely reaches Bodhi's ears. “That's all,” he echoes. “No pressure then.”

“Do you want to?” says Bodhi, his head lolling back against the cushion.

“Yeah,” Cassian says, although it's more of an exhale, really. “It's just, it's-”

“Been a while?” He squeezes Cassian's ankle.

“An understatement,” Cassian says – and now it's Bodhi's turn to laugh.

“Alright,” he says. “Well, we'll do whatever you want.”

“I thought that this was _your_ birthday present.”

“Yeah, well, all I got you was dinner. Consider it a mutual act of gift giving.”

“Okay, okay,” says Cassian, shaking with laughter. “That's it. We're going to bed.” At Bodhi's raised eyebrow he sighs. “To _sleep._ ”

When they're in bed, Cassian turns to him. “I really haven't, you know. Been with anyone for a while. People think that if you're a spy you're seducing people all over the galaxy.”

“I don't care,” says Bodhi. “I wouldn't care if you'd never touched another person before in your life. I want you, and I want you to want me.”

“You know I do,” says Cassian, and he leans down to press a kiss to Bodhi's neck. “I'm nervous, I guess.” He huffs out a laugh against Bodhi's neck, and Bodhi brings his arms around to massage Cassian's shoulders. The muscles there are tight – coiled with anticipation.

“Whenever you want,” he whispers. “Fuck the birthday, I don't care about that – you know I don't. I'll wait for however long you need to.”

“I love you,” says Cassian. “Truly.”

“I love you too. Now come here and kiss me.”

That is the last time they speak of it – until now. It's Bodhi's birthday, and he's being pinned against the mattress, Cassian a solid line of heat and desire pressed along the whole length of him. He thinks about that night when it had all come to a head a few months back – with Erisi sleeping in the living room and he and Cassian flush against each other in that tiny bed. He groans and arches up against Cassian.

“Are you sure?” he manages to gasp out. “You know that I don't n-”

“Please,” Cassian says. “Please, just let me.” It's a plea and an order all at once, and Bodhi goes lax. He's pretty sure that he can feel his pulse pounding in every part of his body – his hands, his tongue, his cock.

“I'm going to die, aren't I?” he says, and Force, it's a whine really. “You're going to kill me.” Cassian's hands are at the tie on his trousers, and he bucks his hips to urge him on.

“How long has it been,” Cassian says, his hand on Bodhi's hip, “since you fucked someone?” The word sounds strange in his accent, pitched low and full of suggestion. Cassian swears a lot, but never like that. Never with such intensity that it makes Bodhi feel light headed.

“A while,” Bodhi says, and he kisses Cassian again, licks into his mouth slowly before pulling back to carry on speaking. “I've usually been the one, you know-”

Cassian breaks away at that, and groans against Bodhi's shoulder, his whole body pressed close to Bodhi's. “Stars,” he says. “I want you to do that to me. I want to know how good it feels.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bodhi groans. “I'm never going to forget you saying that.” He pulls Cassian down into a kiss, a juddering, half-crazed one that leaves them both gasping. “You're sure though?” he says when they pull apart.

“I am so tired of waiting,” Cassian says. “I trust you, and I want you. So come _on_.”

“Can't disobey the Captain's orders now, can I?” Bodhi says, and Cassian is laughing. “Get on your back,” Bodhi says. Then, almost as an afterthought, “Strip.” He stands up and reaches for the bottle of lube that's tucked away in his sock drawer.

“I thought you'd never ask,” Cassian says, and for once, does exactly as Bodhi says. It'd be foolish for anyone to expect someone like Cassian to come out of the war unscathed, and his body is an ode to it. There's a scar that runs low across his stomach, another that comes sneaking around his side. Bodhi knows that if Cassian were to turn over, he'd see a thin, precise line that runs down his spine. Scarif's legacy, that one. There's a huge scar that winds its way up Cassian's left leg, a jagged, ropey white-pink thing that starts just behind his knee and ends at the crease of his thigh and hip. Bodhi's still to learn the story behind that one.

Cassian is ruined. Cassian is beautiful.

“Are you going to stand there and stare all night?” he asks, and Bodhi comes back to the present.

“I could think of worse ways to spend an evening,” Bodhi says, but he's already kneeling down on the bed and gently pushing Cassian's thighs apart. Bodhi is still half dressed himself, and quickly remedies that. Cassian's eyes drift up and down his body – no doubt cataloguing his battle wounds too. “Now _you're_ staring,” he says. Cassian smiles, a sly little thing that flashes his teeth.

“Distract me then,” he says.

Bodhi is good at this part. He slicks his fingers, and Cassian's eyes don't stray from his hands until they're between his legs. “Ready?” he says. “I'm gonna go slow, okay?”

“Yes, yes, _please_ ,” Cassian grits out between his teeth.

He's tight, which is exactly what Bodhi was expecting. He goes tense when Bodhi presses the first finger in, a whole body shudder that seems to be born of surprise more than anything. Bodhi kisses him through it, moving his finger gently, and then as Cassian relaxes, with more purpose. “You're so good,” he whispers against Cassian's mouth.

He works another finger in, and Cassian groans. “I've never-” and then the way Bodhi crooks his fingers makes him gasp. “-ah! Ah, I've never been with someone who takes this much time doing this.”

“Is that a complaint?” Bodhi asks. He's moving his hand in a steady rhythm now, and Cassian's rocking down to match it.

“Fuck, _no_ ,” Cassian sighs. “It's so good.”

“I could do this for _hours_ if you wanted me to,” says Bodhi, and Cassian's entire body jackknifes at the words. He kisses Bodhi then, gasping and groaning into his mouth. Bodhi doesn't think he's even seen or heard Cassian like this in all the years he's known him. He could get used to it pretty quickly. “One more,” he says gently, and presses a third finger in. Cassian spreads his legs even further apart, and throws his head back. His eyes are presses shut, and he breathes out slowly between his teeth. “Hey,” Bodhi says, and stops moving his fingers. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Cassian says slowly, and he looks down. Bodhi does too, and sees how Cassian's cock is flushed and leaking against his stomach. He's close, Bodhi realises. From this alone. The new-found knowledge that he can do this to Cassian makes his own cock throb. He moves his fingers with renewed intent.

“Do you think you're ready?” Bodhi asks. He's aiming for seductive, but even he hears how earnest he sounds.

“Yes,” Cassian says, a little breathlessly.

Bodhi has resisted any urge to touch himself so far, because he's pretty sure that he won't last long once he actually gets to fuck Cassian – and if he'd given in to even the slightest bit of pleasure he could have easily not made it that far. He reaches for more lube, and slicks himself up. Cassian looks at him as he does, and he bites his lip when Bodhi twists his hand and bucks up into his own grip. “You make me feel so good,” Bodhi says. “Even just watching me _,_ fuck-”

“I could watch you for a thousand years and still want more,” Cassian says, and Bodhi feels it – that tell-tale tug of pleasure low in his belly.

“I'm going to come if I don't fuck you,” he says, and Cassian laughs. It's all so easy already, so much more comfortable than any of his other experiences. Bodhi couldn't imagine being so honest with anyone else.

“Come on then,” says Cassian. “I want you so much.”

Bodhi leans forward,, and with one hand, urges Cassian's left leg up around his waist. Then slowly, carefully, he presses in. Cassian falls back against the pillow and sighs, a shuddering little thing that Bodhi is going to remember for the rest of his life. Hell, he's going to remember every moment of this.

There's something quite patrician about Cassian's face normally – his thin lips, his sharp jaw, the sternness of his expression. Not arrogance, not quite, but an otherness nonetheless. Now though, with his hair fanned out across the pillow, his cheeks flushed and his mouth soft, lax and smiling, he's _lovely. “Oh,_ Bodhi,” he says. “That feels amazing.”

Bodhi's not sure he can even speak, it's all so incredibly overwhelming. Cassian feels like nothing else in the galaxy – warm and tight and perfect. He moves forward and presses himself deeper into Cassian, an incremental distance. They both moan at it though, so Bodhi pulls back and does it again, and again and again until he's not sure his body can do anything else.

Propping himself up on one arm, he reaches for Cassian's cock, but Cassian shakes his head. “I don't think you're even going to need to touch me,” Cassian says – and he's blushing deeply now, like he's embarrassed to even say something like that. Bodhi thrusts forward again and he gasps, wrapping both of his legs around Bodhi and urging him forwards..

Bodhi clasps Cassian's hand instead. “Plenty more time for that,” he says. “How long has it been? Really?”

“ _Years,_ ” Cassian says, and his voice is pitched so, so low. “Before I met you.” The significance of that isn't lost on Bodhi, and he leans forward to press a kiss to Cassian's neck.

“I'm so glad you chose me,” he says, and Force does he mean it. He's shaking a little now, from both the effort and the emotion of it all. “Thank you,” he says.

Cassian is quiet at first, but as he grows even more loose and pliant under Bodhi, he gets louder. Soon, he's crying out – Bodhi's name, pleas for _more_ and _harder,_ and then wordless moans that are echoing in the silence of the room. Bodhi can barely breathe, it's all so _much._

He's hot all over, and he can hear his hear pounding in his ears. He's not going to last long now, he can feel it, that slow, unfurling heat that's building low, low, down in him and then washing all over his body. He's pretty sure that's he's never had sex that's quite this good. Nothing could ever come close – and well, that's the story of what Cassian means to him really, isn't it?

“I'm going to come,” he grits out, and he really is so, so close now. Cassian grips his hand and that is what suddenly has him right on the edge, the pleasure now so intense it's almost unbearable. “Cassian, do you want me to-” and he moans, trying to slow the frantic motion of his hips.

“Come in me,” Cassian begs, answering the question Bodhi couldn't quite finish. So Bodhi moves with abandon now, and Cassian is pulling him even closer, closer than any two humans could ever be. To exist like this, as one, Force, wouldn't that be the greatest gift. “Bodhi,” Cassian says, and his voice is so shivery and hot. “Just there, right there, oh, _please-_ ” and Bodhi focuses on Cassian's pleasure alone for a moment that stretches on for an eternity, an eternity of noises that Bodhi drinks from Cassian's mouth, an eternity of Cassian's body growing even more taut before, finally, he comes without a hand on him. 

It's incredible to see and _feel_ Cassian coming, the almost shocked expression that crosses his face before he's tightening around Bodhi and letting his body ride it out, his face the most beautiful thing that Bodhi has ever seen. It's the smile that lights it up that makes Bodhi come, and he might scream, he might not even make a sound at all, because all he knows is that it's so good, and Cassian is laughing through it, and he can only move and grasp Cassian's hand in his.

“ _Oh_ ,” he says as the pleasure ebbs, and his voice is wrecked.

“Yeah,” Cassian gasps, and lets go of Bodhi's hand to wrap his arms around Bodhi's shoulders, holding him there, inside him. “Don't move,” he whispers. “Please.”

“I don't think I could if I tried,” Bodhi says. Cassian's grip around him tightens, and for a while, they just lay there, listening to each other's breathing slow down. When Bodhi does move to get up, Cassian makes a little noise of loss. Bodhi looks at him, and his face is tight with anxiety. Bodhi strokes his cheek gently, and then brushes his sweat-damp hair from his forehead. “Nothing has changed,” he says. “Nothing at all.”

“Okay,” says Cassian, and he breathes out then, an exhalation that's part relief, part realisation. “Yeah, okay.” He props himself up on his elbows, and Bodhi kisses him slowly and sweetly. “Happy birthday,” he says. “Sorry I had to miss so many of the others.”

“We're here now,” Bodhi says. “That's all that matters.” He can almost see the years stretching ahead of them, can feel the weight of their potential settle somewhere deep in his chest.

Cassian smiles, and Bodhi sees the certainty in it.

-

“There is nothing to be scared of,” Cassian says. “Absolutely nothing.” He's waist deep in the water, his hair tied up high on his head. Bodhi stands there at the water's edge, the waves nudging at his toes. He looks at Cassian dubiously.

“That's easy for you to say,” he mumbles. “You've done this before.”

“You're not going to drown,” Cassian says bluntly, and Bodhi thinks of him training new recruits all those years ago. Cassian is a good teacher. Methodical, calm, confident. Bodhi trusts him. It's more his own body he suspects is going to let him down. “You already know how to swim,” Cassian says. “It'll be fine.”

“I've never swum in the _sea_ ,” Bodhi says. “It's a little different.” He steps forward though, and the water is washing over his feet, then his ankles, then his calves. It's a little cold, even though it's a warm day, and he gasps.

“You should probably move a little quicker,” Cassian says. “You'll get over the cold faster.”

Bodhi does, and soon, he's waist deep just like Cassian, his teeth chattering furiously. “You do this for _fun_?” he asks incredulously, although it comes out a little plaintive instead.

Cassian laughs, and ducks his head under the water. Bodhi, because he's Bodhi, holds his breath until he re-emerges. “It's _nice_ ,” he says. “Just try it.”

After ten minutes, Bodhi is still yet to be convinced that shoving his head under the surface of some freezing cold seawater is a nice way to spend a morning, but there is something to just laying back and letting the waves carry you. Cassian paddles along beside him, and though he's smiling, he's watching Bodhi carefully. “I'm not going to swim away from you,” he says lazily, and the sun feels _really_ good on his face, the sea cradling him as he bobs up and down. “I don't think I'd get very far.”

“I'm just looking,” says Cassian, and reaches for Bodhi's hand under the water. “We probably should head in soon though. The rock where you've left your clothes is going to be underwater in about fifteen minutes.” Bodhi swears softly, and then Cassian is pulling him upright and kissing him, his hands a firm pressure on Bodhi's waist. Cassian tastes like salt, and he pulls away and presses two fingers to Bodhi's mouth. Bodhi licks at them, and Cassian groans. “You're a menace,” he says.

“You lured me out here,” Bodhi says. “I can't be held accountable for my actions.”

“Perhaps we should go back,” Cassian says. “Not just for obvious reasons, but so you don't lose your clothes to the sea.”

Cassian is right, of course. Bodhi does manage to pull on his clothes before the sea swallows them gladly, and together they climb the sandy path that leads them back home. Cassian shrugs off his wetsuit and flings it in the laundry basket as soon as they do, and sits on the windowsill. It's still early, and no one's going to be around to look up at the house and see him. Both he and Bodhi aren't particularly bothered about being nude – the war saw to that pretty quickly. Now though, Bodhi looks at Cassian and feels _want_ course through him. He wants to drop to his knees and lick whatever salt water is left on Cassian's skin off.

So he does. Cassian look down at him and smiles, biting his bottom lip as if to stop himself from saying something. He leans back against the window, half obscured by the net curtain. His silhouette is hazy in the early morning light, and Bodhi can only pick out a few things from down here – the sunlight catching his hair, the shift of his bared knee as it brushes against the curtain.

The scar on Cassian's thigh stands out more starkly than ever. Bodhi leans in, lowers his head to Cassian's knee and presses his lips to the thin, tapering point of it. Cassian makes a sound through his teeth and Bodhi hears his hand scrabbling for the edge of the windowsill. He kisses up, and up, and up until he reaches the widest part of it. “How did you get this?” he says softly, and the muscles of Cassian's thigh twitch.

“Jumped out of a broken window on Jakku,” Cassian says slowly, as if constructing a sentence is a monumental effort. “Some girl stitched me up in the back room of a bar.”

“Hope you repaid her,” Bodhi says, and licks along the ruined skin softly. Cassian groans at that, and his hand comes to rest on Bodhi's head. “Was she pretty?” he asks, and his breath must cool the wetness his mouth has left because Cassian shudders.

“Y-yeah,” he says, voice just about holding. “Nothing like you though.”

“Good,” says Bodhi. He means it. Possessiveness flares up in him, and he spreads Cassian's legs further apart. He carries on kissing his way up his thigh, following the scar all the way. Cassian's back bows away from the window, and Bodhi thinks that he hears the word _please_ in the soft exhalation of his breath.

Bodhi's never really been the galaxy's best at sucking cock – but after sleeping with Cassian for a few weeks now, he's beginning to understand that Cassian is the kind of man who values affection rather than experience. So he takes Cassian in his mouth, and tries to convey how much he loves doing this. Cassian moans, and brings his hand to rest so, so gently in Bodhi's hair.

Now that Bodhi _does_ like.

When Cassian comes, both of his knees are flung over Bodhi's shoulders, and he cradles Bodhi's face in his hands as he spills into his mouth. Bodhi is the one who is kneeling like he's at morning prayers, but the way that Cassian looks at him is nothing short of reverent, worshipful. When he stands up, Cassian's hands work their way down his body until they're resting at the waistband of his trunks. “Can I?” he says, looking up at Bodhi.

“You don't exactly have to ask,” Bodhi says, and Cassian's face twists a little at that.

“Yes, but I want to.” He runs his thumb in little circles through the hair on Bodhi's lower belly. “So, can I?”

“Yes,” Bodhi says, “yes, yes, _yes._ ”

Cassian's hand around him is gentle at first, the barest pressure, but then he's gripping Bodhi harder, working him faster. Bodhi leans forward, cradled between Cassian's legs, and presses his hand to the window to support himself. Cassian presses kisses to his chest – and then, in an act of unprecedented genius, takes one of Bodhi's nipples in his mouth, working it between his teeth and then sucking. Bodhi groans, a full body sound that must please Cassian, because he's pulling away to look up at Bodhi and grin. “You like that, huh? Anyone ever done that to you before?”

“Yes,” Bodhi chokes out, “but no one's ever gone to town quite like that.”

Cassian doesn't answer with words, but bites down on Bodhi's other nipple instead. Bodhi doesn't say anything after that, just focuses on the dual motions of Cassian's mouth at his chest and his hand between his legs. When he comes, his palm is sweat-slick and sliding against the glass of the window, and he's shouting Cassian's name to the answering roar of the sea outside.

The day stretches out before them, a blessed landscape of nothing that is theirs to do with what they will. Perhaps they'll go swimming again - shucking off their clothes and running into the water completely bare. Bodhi tells Cassian this when he's making breakfast, and he's met with a pleased little hum and a look that says _maybe, if you're good._

-

After what they've both lived through, it is hard, sometimes, to carry on with any semblance of normality. Cassian will wake, frantically patting at the spot on his chest where once, there would have been a pocket containing a cyanide pill. Sometimes Bodhi will sit staring out of the window for hours on end, wondering why he survived when so many others didn't.

It's hard – there's no point lying about that. It wouldn't do anyone a favour. With Cassian there though, it's easier.

Bodhi thinks about the future now, more often than not. He's spent so long obsessing over the past, but it's not at the forefront of his mind now. Instead, he'll think about birthdays, anniversaries, holidays – all those dates that are so, so mundane in the grand order of things. Bodhi treasures them.

One day, Cassian pulls a little pouch from his bag and gently tips the contents of it into Bodhi's waiting palm. It's Jyn's crystal, the one that Chirrut had heard singing to him from across the marketplace, the one that she'd been wearing when she died. It's warm in Bodhi's hand, and when he closes his fist around it, he's sure that he can feel it pulse.

“If we ever have a daughter,” Cassian says quietly, and Bodhi's heart races at those words, “we'll give this to her.” Bodhi allows himself to picture it – Cassian with a chubby-cheeked little girl at his hip, her delighted little laughs as Bodhi dangles the kyber crystal just out of her reach. They'll give her what they were never lucky enough to have. After all, that's what they fought for, wasn't it?

“When,” Bodhi says, and it takes a minute for Cassian to realise what he's saying, and then he's kissing Bodhi so softly, the barest hint of a kiss. _A promise,_ Bodhi thinks to himself.

There's a little registry office in town, a place where you can take wedding vows as quickly as it would to renew your speeder license. That suits Bodhi and Cassian just fine. They've had enough of spectacle and ceremony to last a lifetime. Within half an hour, they're standing on the sun-drenched pavement again, only this time, as husbands.

“Well,” Bodhi says. “Ain't that something.”

“Oh it's something alright,” says Cassian, and that is that. They're linked now, by both law and whatever private bond that's been born of years fighting alongside each other. Cassian holds his hand, and Bodhi feels like shouting at the top of his lungs. _We made it, we made it!_ He looks at Cassian instead, and sees that reflected back at him.

When he was a boy, he could never have imagined this. Living by the sea, a veteran of war, a hero to many. To the boy who was always dreaming of worlds other than vast expanses of sand, or later, the pilot who just dreamed of doing the right thing, this life that he has now would be impossible to conjure.

It's a life that he deserves, he realises. “We're still young,” he says to Cassian when they're on their way back from the market one afternoon. “We're not even halfway through our lives.”

“I don't _feel_ young,” says Cassian, but where his words would once have been forlorn, they're now easy. “Do you?”

“I feel like I've got time now,” Bodhi says. “Does that make sense?” The future unreels before him – a daughter, thousands of sunrises, laughter, and throughout all of that, a single presence at his side.

“I think I do,” says Cassian. “Time to make plans. To grow.” He places a hand on Bodhi's shoulder, and Bodhi leans into the touch. “So,” Cassian says. “What's next then?”

Bodhi laughs, just because he can. He opens his mouth, and that is where everything begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm wolfhalls over @ tumblr if you wanna tell me i'm an idiot.


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